Afghanistan and Pakistan have been fighting since last month
Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of intentionally attacking a hospital in an airstrike that has reportedly left 400 people dead. Pakistan dismissed the accusation said the strikes did not hit any civilian sites.
The incident on Monday, March 16, is one of the latest since the conflict between the neighbours that sparked last month. The fighting has been marked by repeated cross-border clashes and air strikes inside Afghanistan.
The broader Middle East, meanwhile, has been drawn into a widespread regional conflict after the United States and Israel carried out joint strikes on key Iranian sites on February 28. Iran has retaliated, plunging the region into war for over more than two weeks.
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Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said, in a post on X, that the air strike had hit the hospital at about 9pm local time.
Fitrat said that large sections of the 2,000-bed facility were destroyed and the death toll had “so far” reached 400 people, while about 250 people had been reported injured.
Local television aired footage, posted on social media, of security forces using torches as they carried out casualties while firefighters fought flames among the ruins of a building.
Afghan officials just hours earlier said the two sides exchanged fire along their common border, in which four people in Afghanistan were killed, as the deadliest fighting between the neighbours in years entered a third week.
Afghan government spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, condemned the strike in a post on X and accused Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate horrors”. He said the deceased and injured were patients at the hospital.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, said the allegations were baseless and no hospital was targeted in Kabul.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information, in a post on X, said the strikes “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure including technical equipment storage and ammunition storage of Afghan Taliban” and Afghanistan-based Pakistani militants in Kabul and Nangarhar, saying the facilities were being used against innocent Pakistani civilians.
It said Pakistan’s targeting was “precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted”.
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