Rescue crews have been nonetheless digging our bodies out of the rubble of a drug rehabilitation hospital within the Afghan capital on Tuesday morning, after officers stated an in a single day Pakistani airstrike killed at the very least 400 individuals.
It was a dramatic escalation of a battle between the 2 neighbours that’s now in its third week.
Pakistan rejected Afghanistan’s accusation that it focused a hospital, insisting its strikes, which have been additionally carried out in japanese Afghanistan on Monday, have been geared toward navy services.
It dismissed Afghanistan’s claims of lots of of casualties from a strike on a hospital as propaganda.
The casualties have been taken to a number of hospitals within the space.
It was not instantly potential to independently affirm the dying toll.
The battle between Afghanistan and Pakistan started in late February, and has seen repeated cross-border clashes in addition to airstrikes inside Afghanistan.
International requires a ceasefire have gone unheeded.
The strike got here hours after Afghan officers stated that the 2 sides exchanged fireplace alongside their widespread border, killing 4 individuals in Afghanistan.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of offering a protected haven for militants who regularly perform assaults inside Pakistan, particularly for the Pakistani Taliban, a bunch separate however intently allied with the Afghan Taliban who took over Afghanistan in 2021 within the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of US-led troops.
The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, is designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States.
Kabul denies the cost.
In a late-night submit on X, Afghanistan’s deputy authorities spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat stated the airstrike had hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at about 9pm native time.
He stated that enormous sections of the ability had been destroyed, and that the dying toll had “so far” reached 400 individuals, whereas about 250 individuals had been reported wounded.
There was no up to date official dying toll on Tuesday morning.
Local tv stations posted footage on X exhibiting safety forces utilizing flashlights as they carried out casualties whereas firefighters struggled to extinguish flames among the many ruins of a constructing.
The Omid hospital was renamed and expanded in dimension roughly a 12 months in the past from the Ibn Sina Drug Addiction Treatment Hospital.
The website, close to Kabul’s worldwide airport, is positioned beside a former Nato navy base, Camp Phoenix, the place US forces used to coach the Afghan National Army.
After the Taliban seized management of the nation in 2021, the bottom was taken over by Afghanistan’s new authorities.
It was not instantly clear what was now housed on the location of the previous base.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry stated in an X submit that the Pakistani navy had “precisely targeted” Camp Phoenix, which it stated was now a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site”.
However, it stated that the hospital was “multiple kilometres” away from the previous camp and accused Afghan officers of mendacity.
Google Maps additionally exhibits one other location, east of Kabul metropolis, additionally labelled as Camp Phoenix.
“Another important question also lingers, as to why would an alleged drug rehabilitation facility be co-located with lethal ammunition storage site in a military camp? This also remains unanswered,” the Information Ministry wrote.
Afghan authorities spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike on X, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors”.
He stated these killed have been “innocent civilians and addicts”.
“We strongly condemn this crime and consider such an act to be against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity,” he stated in a separate submit on X.
A member of the rescue staff working on the website on Tuesday morning, Allah Mohammad Farooq, stated that lots of had been killed.
“When we arrived here, everyone was buried under the rubble,” he stated.
“We then used a crane to pull them out.
“Most of the individuals have been useless, and lots of are nonetheless trapped below the particles.”
In Islamabad, information minister Attaullah Tarar rejected Afghanistan’s accusations that its airstrike had targeted a hospital as “completely baseless”.
Mr Tarar said in a statement that the “Afghan Taliban regime is peddling yet one more falsehood” and that Pakistan had only engaged military and militant targets.
He said that Pakistan had targeted facilities “being instantly or not directly used to plan, facilitate, shelter, prepare or abet terrorist assaults inside Pakistan”.
Mr Tarar said that overnight strikes in Kabul and in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar were “exact, deliberate {and professional}” and denied that any civilian infrastructure was hit.
“No hospital, no drug rehabilitation centre, and no civilian facility was focused,” he stated.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/kabul-afghan-pakistani-b2939926.html