Kathmandu. At least 400 people have been killed in a Pakistani airstrike on a hospital in the Afghan capital Kabul, officials say. Pakistan, however, said there was no attack on the hospital.
“At around 9 pm, Pakistan attacked the 2,000-bed Omar Adduction Treatment Hospital, destroying a large part of the hospital,” Hamdullah Fitrat, a deputy spokesman for the Afghan government, wrote on X. Rescue teams have been deployed to douse the fire and retrieve the bodies from the debris, he added.
Footage released by local television showed security forces using torches to pull out the dead and injured, while firefighters tried to douse the blaze amid the rubble.
Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid strongly criticized Pakistan for the attack on hospitals and civilian infrastructure. “This is a crime against humanity,” he said.
Refutation of Pakistan
However, Pakistan has denied that it attacked the hospital. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman Mosharraf Zaidi said that no hospitals in Kabul were targeted.
Pakistan’s Information Ministry said in a statement that the airstrikes targeted military installations, technical equipment depots and ammunition depots across Afghanistan. The ministry said the attack was carried out with “utmost care” and was carried out without causing damage to civilian infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council has called on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to immediately step up its counter-terrorism efforts. The Council, through its unanimous resolution, strongly condemned all forms of terrorism.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harbouring militants including the Pakistani Taliban, a charge Kabul denies.
Tensions between the two countries escalated in late February. Afghanistan claimed that the cross-border attack followed Pakistan’s air strikes on Afghan territory. Since then, there have been frequent clashes and air strikes between the two sides. Pakistan has said that it is in an “open war” with Afghanistan.
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