Airstrike on Kabul hospital leaves hundreds dead, officials say

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Rescuers in Kabul recovered more bodies from the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital after Afghanistan said an overnight airstrike by Pakistan killed more than 400 people, as the border conflict between the two countries entered its third week. Afghanistan said the strike hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital and that dozens more people were injured, while Pakistan denied targeting the hospital and disputed the casualty toll.

Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat posted on X that the airstrike hit the Omid hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at about 9 p.m. local time, and that large sections of the facility had been destroyed. Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said 408 people were killed and 265 injured.

Pakistan rejected Afghanistan’s accusations, insisting its strikes across eastern Afghanistan on Monday were against military facilities and dismissing Afghan claims of hundreds of casualties as propaganda. Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in an X post that the Pakistani military had “precisely targeted” Camp Phoenix and described it as a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site,” while also saying that the hospital was “multiple kilometers” away from the former camp and accusing Afghan officials of lying.

Crowds gathered near the hospital in Kabul to search for relatives among the injured and the dead, but it was not possible to independently confirm the reported death toll. In local television footage, security forces carried casualties from the site using flashlights while firefighters struggled to extinguish flames, and an AP reporter in an area near the site said he heard a military jet fly overhead followed by a powerful explosion.

Rescue efforts continued on Tuesday as a crane was used to move debris at the site. Rescue team worker Allah Mohammad Farooq said, “When we arrived here, everyone was buried under the rubble,” adding that “We then used a crane to pull them out,” and that “Most of the people were dead, and many are still trapped under the debris.” Another man, Haji Najibullah, said his son and other relatives had been patients in the facility, and he said, “We have no information about who is alive and who is buried under the rubble. Only God knows who may have survived and who may be injured.”

Afghan authorities also published a list of 500 people they said had been at the treatment center and were safe to ease crowds of desperate relatives searching for loved ones. The Omid hospital was renamed and expanded roughly a year ago from the Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital as part of government plans to address drug addiction, according to the AP report. The site is near Kabul’s international airport and adjacent to Camp Phoenix, a former NATO military base where U.S. forces used to train the Afghan National Army before the base was taken over by Afghanistan’s new authorities after the Taliban seized power; the AP report said it was not immediately clear what was housed at the site after that transition.

Speaking during a meeting with foreign ambassadors in Kabul, Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said the country wanted stability, telling the ambassadors, “The whole nation does not favor war,” and adding, “However, if war is imposed upon it, then with great courage it will prove its right to self defense and will defend its land and its beliefs.” Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors,” and said those killed were “innocent civilians and addicts.”

The United Nations mission in Afghanistan called for an immediate ceasefire. In a statement, it expressed its “deepest condolences to the families of those killed” and said it was “an airstrike carried out by Pakistan military forces (that) impacted the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital,” adding that it was a health care facility for treating drug-addicted individuals and that dozens of whom were “reportedly killed and injured.” UN human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan called for an investigation and said those responsible must be “held to account in line with international standards,” adding in Geneva that since Afghanistan and Pakistan began fighting in late February, 289 Afghan civilians, including 104 children, had been killed or injured and tens of thousands displaced.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar rejected Afghanistan’s accusations that Pakistan targeted a hospital, calling them “entirely baseless.” Tarar said Pakistan targeted facilities “being directly or indirectly used to plan, facilitate, shelter, train or abet terrorist attacks inside Pakistan,” and he said strikes in Kabul and the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar were “precise, deliberate and professional,” adding that “No hospital, no drug rehabilitation center, and no civilian facility was targeted.”

The AP report said the fighting is the most severe between the two neighbors since late February, when Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes. It also said the clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October after earlier fighting killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants, and that Pakistan has declared it is in “open war” with Afghanistan.