Afghanistan said over 400 civilians were killed in an alleged Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul on Monday.
In a post on X, Afghan deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat announced the attack and death toll after social media footage showed the smoldering ruin of the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital. Pakistan has vehemently denied targeting the hospital. The reported attack came hours after another exchange of fire across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border as the war between the two continues into its third week.
“The Pakistani military regime carried out an airstrike at approximately 9:00 PM this evening on the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility dedicated to the treatment of drug addiction. As a result of the attack, large sections of the hospital have been destroyed, and there are serious concerns about a high number of casualties,” he said, adding that the death toll had risen to 400 with another 250 injured.
“Rescue teams are currently at the scene working to control the fire and recover the remaining bodies of the victims,” Fitrat added.
Afghan government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid sought to cultivate further sympathies by drawing parallels with Israel.
“The Pakistani military regime employs Israeli tactics in its aggressions and assaults against Afghans, targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors,” he said in a post on X.
Islamabad pushed back against the claims, claiming all its airstrikes targeted the terrorist infrastructure of the Taliban. The prime minister’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, reposted a message from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s fact checker calling the Taliban’s messages “propaganda.”
“Pakistan precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure including technical equipment storage and ammunition storage of Afghan Taliban and Fitna al-Khawarij in Kabul and Nangarhar that were being used against innocent Pakistani civilians. Post strike detonation of stored ammunition being used by Master Terror Proxy also fully contradicts the fake claim,” it read.
“Pakistan’s targeting is precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted. This misreporting of facts as drug rehabilitation facility seeks to stir sentiments, covering illegitimate support to cross-border terrorism,” the statement added.
Zaidi then captioned the statement with his own take on events.
“The addiction? The Afghan Taliban’s constant lies. The cure? Pakistan’s counter terrorism operations. The timeline? InshaAllah, as long as it takes for the elimination of terrorists and their infrastructure,” he wrote.
Saif Khyber, spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Afghanistan, went several steps further than his compatriots, connecting the attack to both President Donald Trump and Israel despite the noninvolvement of both in the conflict.
“The Pakistani army, which Trump has allegedly hired to act with hostility toward humanity like a second Israeli state, carried out an attack tonight on a hospital for addicts, killing and wounding 400 innocent patients,” he said in one post.
In another post, he described the attack as coming from the “Pakistani renegade army,” vowing that “These sons of Trump will certainly be held accountable.”
A follow-up post claimed the attack was from “Trump-hired Pakistani militias” and derisively referred to it as a “Jewish army.”
Though overshadowed by the larger war in neighboring Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan entered a state of “open war” the same week. The war began after several rounds of airstrikes and cross-border skirmishes, stemming from Pakistani claims that the Afghan government was harboring terrorists who used the country as a base to launch attacks against Pakistan.
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The war has been almost as one-sided as the war in Iran, with the more technologically advanced Pakistani army inflicting several times more casualties against the struggling Taliban.
Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar has put the Taliban death count at 684, while Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry put the Pakistani death count at 100. Both sides accused the other of inflating the opponent’s casualty numbers.
