Afghanistan accused Pakistan’s military on Monday of striking a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, killing at least 400 people and damaging large parts of the facility, according to Afghan officials. Pakistan rejected the accusation, saying its airstrikes were aimed at military targets and did not hit any civilian sites.
Afghan Deputy Government Spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the airstrike hit the hospital at about 9 p.m. local time, destroying large sections of the 2,000-bed facility, and said the death toll had “so far” reached 400. Fitrat also said about 250 people were reported injured, as local television stations posted footage on social media showing security forces using flashlights while firefighters struggled to extinguish flames among the ruins.
Afghan officials said the strike came hours after the two sides exchanged fire along their shared border, killing four people in Afghanistan. The Associated Press reported that the fighting—described by Afghan officials as the deadliest between the neighbors in years—entered a third week, after beginning late last month.
Zabihullah Mujahid, an Afghan government spokesperson, condemned the strike in a post on social media, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors.” Mujahid also said before the death toll rose into the hundreds that those killed and injured were patients at the hospital.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesperson Mosharraf Zaidi dismissed Afghanistan’s allegation as baseless, saying no hospital was targeted in Kabul. Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said in an early-hours post that the Pakistani military had “carried out precision airstrikes” targeting military installations in Kabul and in Nangarhar, and he said “technical support infrastructure and ammunition storage facilities” at two locations in Kabul were destroyed.
Pakistan’s information ministry also described Mujahid’s claim as “false and misleading,” saying it was aimed at stirring sentiment and covering what it characterized as “illegitimate support for cross-border terrorism.” It said Pakistan’s targeting was “precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted,” and Afghanistan denied that it provides safe haven to militant groups blamed for attacks in Pakistan.
The hospital strike unfolded as the United Nations pressed both sides to reduce violence and curb militancy. The U.N. Security Council resolution adopted unanimously called on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to “immediately step up” efforts to combat terrorism, while extending the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, for three months.
The wider conflict began late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan that Kabul said killed civilians. Pakistan has declared it is in “open war” with Afghanistan, and international concern has grown as militant groups including al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have tried to resurface in the area.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari also said Afghanistan’s Taliban administration crossed a “red line” by deploying drones that injured civilians in Pakistan last week. In response to those attacks, Pakistan’s air force struck equipment storage sites and “technical support infrastructure” in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar Province, according to the Associated Press, while Kabul said Pakistan hit two locations including an empty security site and a drug rehabilitation center that sustained minor damage.
In Kabul, Afghanistan’s administrative Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi said defending sovereignty is the duty of all citizens, and he expressed regret over civilian casualties in recent Pakistani attacks, saying the war was imposed on Afghanistan.