Afghan Pink Crescent Society volunteers stand close to the coffins of victims of a Pakistani air strike on a drug rehabilitation centre, throughout a mass burial on the Badam Bagh Hilltop in Kabul on March 18, 2026.
| Picture Credit score: AFP
Bulldozers dug pits in a cemetery within the Afghan capital forward of a mass funeral on Wednesday (March 18, 2026) for among the victims of what officers have stated was a Pakistani airstrike that hit a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul earlier this week.
The strike was the deadliest in an escalating battle between the 2 neighbours, now in its third week. Afghan officers have put the demise toll at 408 folks, with 265 wounded. The toll couldn’t be independently verified.
Pakistan rejects Afghanistan’s accusation that it focused the Omid Habit Remedy Hospital, insisting its strikes in Kabul and japanese Afghanistan on Monday (March 16, 2026) had been towards army services. It has dismissed Afghan claims of lots of of casualties as propaganda.
In an interview with The Related Press in Islamabad on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Info Minister Attaullah Tarar stated Pakistan had “solely focused terrorist infrastructure.” “We’ve simply gone after the Afghan Taliban regime, their army setups, their terrorist infrastructure, and all of the setups that are supporting or selling terrorists,” Mr. Tarar stated.
The battle between Afghanistan and Pakistan has seen repeated cross-border clashes in addition to airstrikes inside Afghanistan, together with a number of within the capital, because it started in late February, regardless of worldwide requires a ceasefire.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of offering a protected haven for militants who perform assaults inside Pakistan, particularly for the Pakistani Taliban. The group is separate however carefully allied with the Afghan Taliban, who took over Afghanistan in 2021 within the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. Kabul denies the cost.
On Wednesday, mild rain fell as ambulances lined up exterior the cemetery and started unloading plain wood caskets. The mass funeral was for victims who had been from the province of Kabul and whose our bodies had already been recognized. Victims from elsewhere in Afghanistan can be transported to their house provinces for burial, authorities stated.
The two,000-bed Omid hospital was hit at round 9 p.m. on Monday. It had been renamed and expanded in measurement roughly a yr in the past from a beforehand present remedy facility as a part of the Taliban authorities’s efforts to stamp out a big drug dependancy drawback within the nation.
Afghanistan’s huge poppy fields have been the supply of a lot of the world’s heroin, and that, together with many years of battle and widespread poverty, has fuelled drug dependancy that the nation’s present rulers have vowed to fight.
The positioning, close to Kabul’s worldwide airport, is adjoining to a former NATO army base, Camp Phoenix, the place U.S. forces used to coach the Afghan Nationwide Military. It wasn’t instantly clear what was now housed on the web site. The strike prompted an intense fireplace on the hospitals, with footage from native tv exhibiting rescue crews combing by way of the wreckage with flashlights late into Monday night time as firefighters struggled to extinguish the blaze.
Mr. Tarar stated Pakistan’s strikes “have been very exact and these strikes had been carried out in an ammunition depot in Kabul. Within the aftermath of which, we noticed fumes and flames within the environment in Kabul.” He stated the following lack of life, which he didn’t quantify, occurred “as a result of there was ammunition, there have been technical tools, there have been arms there in that depot.” Our bodies had been nonetheless being pulled from the smoldering stays of the hospital on Tuesday morning.
Afghan authorities spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike, accusing Pakistan of “concentrating on hospitals and civilian websites to perpetrate horrors.” He stated these killed had been “harmless civilians and addicts.” The combating, essentially the most extreme between the 2 neighbors, started in late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border assaults in response to Pakistani airstrikes. The clashes disrupted a ceasefire brokered by Qatar in October, after earlier combating killed dozens of troopers, civilians and suspected militants.
Pakistan has declared it is in “open warfare” with Afghanistan final month. The battle has alarmed the worldwide neighborhood, significantly as the world is one the place different militant organizations, together with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, nonetheless have a presence and have been attempting to resurface.
Revealed – March 18, 2026 09:56 pm IST