At least 400 people were killed and more than 250 were injured after Pakistan carried out cross-border airstrikes in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province on February 20 and 21. Islamabad said the strikes precisely targeted terrorist camps and were launched in response to recent attacks inside Pakistan.
However, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has put the death toll at 143.
Satellite images captured on March 20 show the aftermath of the strikes on Kabul’s Omid Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility. What was once a cluster of organised buildings, including one large roofed structure and several smaller surrounding facilities, now lies in rubble. The layout appears consistent with a civilian rehabilitation centre rather than the regimented formations typically associated with a military installation.
The facility is located at the former Camp Phoenix, a NATO base once operated by the US Army. After the 2021 Taliban takeover, the site was converted into Afghanistan’s largest rehabilitation centre for drug addicts. Less than three miles from Kabul’s international airport, the hospital is run by the Interior Ministry, which also oversees the country’s counternarcotics department, according to Reuters.
Pakistan claimed responsibility for the strike but maintains that it had targeted a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site.”
The conflict, which escalated in February after Pakistan launched a dozen airstrikes on militant targets in Afghanistan, marks the most serious confrontation in years between the neighbours, who share a 2,600-km border. Yet it has received relatively less international attention as global focus remains fixed on the spiralling US-Israeli war on Iran.
India condemned Pakistan’s airstrike on Kabul’s Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital as a “cowardly and unconscionable attack on civilians”. MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said it cannot be justified as a military strike, accused Pakistan of dressing up a massacre as an operation, and called it a violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty and a threat to regional peace.
India also sent a 2.5-ton consignment of emergency medicines, medical disposables, kits and equipment to Kabul to support treatment and the recovery of those injured in the March 16 attack. It said it stands in solidarity with the Afghan people and will continue to extend humanitarian support.
