Dozens of people were killed on Monday night in an airstrike against a medical center in Kabul. The Taliban government, which puts the death toll at 400 and 250 wounded, has accused Pakistan of the bombing. Islamabad has denied the attack on the complex, a rehabilitation center for drug addicts, although it does admit that it has “precisely bombed military installations and infrastructure supporting terrorists” in Kabul and Nangahar province, on the country’s eastern border.
who was able to access the place, some parts of the medical center were on fire and he was able to see at least 30 bodies being transported on stretchers. Workers at the complex have told the British public broadcaster that around 2,000 people were receiving treatment at the centre, so they did fear that there were hundreds of victims.
Witnesses cited by Reuters point out that explosions occurred just as patients finished afternoon prayers and that at least two of them took place in the room area. “The whole place caught fire, it was like doomsday,” one declared. “My friends were burned in the fire, we couldn’t save them,” he added.
The spokesman for the Taliban Ministry of Health, Sharafat Zaman Amarkhail, has declared that there are no military facilities near the health center, at whose doors relatives of those admitted were crowding in search of news. A Taliban spokesman put the death toll at 400, but this could not be independently verified.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information has stated that the attacks “were carried out precisely and carefully to ensure that no collateral damage was inflicted” and rejected the Taliban’s figures as “distortions that seek to exalt feelings to gain illegitimate support for border terrorism” of which it accuses its neighboring country. “The visible secondary explosions after the attacks clearly indicate the presence of large ammunition stores,” Pakistan’s Information Minister, Attaullah Tarar, noted in X.
The Omid complex, formerly a US military base, was used as a meeting place by many drug addicts in the Afghan capital, but in 2016 it was converted into a rehabilitation center. In addition to treating addictions, he gave patients training, such as tailoring or carpentry, so that they could earn a living once they were rehabilitated.
The border conflict between both countries, although old, escalated last month to extremes not seen in years, after a series of attacks by Pakistan, which shares 2,600 kilometers of border with its neighbor, against what it claims to be bases of militiamen supported by Kabul. Afghanistan has defended itself by accusing Islamabad of violating its sovereignty and has launched its own attacks. The skirmishes have escalated to military attacks in other areas, in which each accuses the other of killing hundreds of people.
Pakistan accuses the Taliban of harboring militia groups that attack them, while the Taliban deny this and say that fighting these groups is an internal problem for their neighbors.
The UN special rapporteur for Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, has condemned the bombing and has declared himself “dismayed”. The United Nations expert urged the parties to de-escalate, exercise maximum restraint and respect international law, “including the protection of civilians and civilian objects, such as hospitals.”
