Search for relatives after Pakistani airstrikes on Kabul hospital
Families were searching for missing relatives outside hospitals across Kabul on Tuesday after a strike on the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, as uncertainty persisted over the extent of the casualties and the fate of victims.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said 408 people were killed and 265 wounded, although the toll could not be independently verified. The director of forensic medicine told TOLOnews that 98 bodies had been transferred for identification.
At the hospital run by the non-governmental organization EMERGENCY, 24 wounded people were brought in, and three who were already dead, a TOLOnews reporter said, citing officials.
Rescue operations continued, and a health worker said more than 50 bodies may still be buried.
The facility, a former US military base turned drug rehabilitation centre by the Taliban, had more than five blocks destroyed, with the rest damaged. Authorities said victims may be buried in a mass funeral unless the families hold private ceremonies.
One survivor said they heard gunfire before the blast, and noted that the facility is near a Taliban recruitment centre, which may have led to it being misidentified.
These accounts could not be independently verified.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information rejected claims the strike targeted civilians, saying operations focused on “military installations and terrorist support infrastructure,” including equipment and ammunition storage in Kabul and Nangarhar.
“There won’t be any pause in our strikes. We don’t want to lose the momentum, even if it was a mishit,” a Pakistani official told dpa.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) condemned the strike, saying dozens of patients were reportedly killed or injured and urging all parties to respect international law protecting medical facilities and civilians.
