About 400 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, the Afghan government said Tuesday, calling it the deadliest attack in the latest surge of violence with Pakistan.
Hundreds more were said to have been wounded at the facility, which was hit on Monday night, flattening buildings used to treat people from across the country for addictions to marijuana, amphetamines and other narcotics.
There was no immediate independent verification of the toll, but Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters saw at least 30 bodies taken from the site in the chaotic and smouldering aftermath of the attack on Monday night.
They then saw more than 65 removed Tuesday as rescuers picked through the rubble in the search for victims and survivors.
"The toll is not final as the rescue operation is still going on, but we have around 400 martyrs and more than 200 wounded," said Interior Ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman, calling the strike "against the Geneva Convention and all international laws."
Another ministry spokesperson, Abdul Mateen Qan,i gave a toll of "408 killed and 265 wounded" at the same briefing.
The Italian NGO Emergency said soon after the strike that it received three bodies at its hospital in Kabul and was treating 27 wounded, but expected the toll to be much higher.
The Taliban government has accused Pakistan of deliberately targeting civilians. But Islamabad maintained it had carried out precision strikes.
On Tuesday, the information ministry in Islamabad said its target – "a location storing military and terrorist weapons and equipment" – was "several kilometers away" from the clinic and questioned the Afghan authorities' version of events.
The two sides have been in conflict for months, with Islamabad accusing its neighbour of harbouring Islamist extremists who have mounted deadly cross-border attacks on its territory.
Chairs, blankets, pieces of hospital beds and human remains could be seen in the blackened ruins of the rehabilitation center as dawn broke.
Crowds gathered outside as family members sought news of their loved ones, including Baryalai Amiri, a 38-year-old mechanic, whose brother was admitted as a patient about 25 days ago.
"We are not given the proper information," he told AFP, as rescuers picked through the rubble nearby. "So far, we don't know where he is."
Monday evening's attack triggered panic in Kabul, sending people running for cover as anti-aircraft guns fired back not long after they had broken their daily Ramadan fast.
"I heard the sound of the jet patrolling," Omid Stanikzai, 31, a security guard at the drug treatment center, told AFP.
"There were military units all around us. When these military units fired on the jet, the jet dropped bombs and a fire broke out."
All of the dead and injured were civilians, he added.
Pakistan said it also hit the eastern border province of Nangarhar Monday.
"Pakistan's targeting is precise and carefully undertaken to ensure no collateral damage is inflicted," the information ministry said Monday.
Habibullah Kabulbai, 55, arrived at the center Monday night, hoping to find his brother, Nawroz, who was admitted five days ago.
"I can't find him," he said, weeping. "What should we do? I have no words ... We are helpless. This has not only happened to me but to the whole of Afghanistan."
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was "dismayed" by reports of the airstrikes and civilian casualties, and called on both sides to "de-escalate."
On Friday, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan confirmed the deaths of at least 75 civilians in the country since clashes with Pakistan intensified on Feb. 26.
Pakistan's arch-foe India called Monday's strike "a cowardly and unconscionable act of violence" that threatened regional peace and stability.
China said Monday that its special envoy has spent a week mediating between the two sides and urged an immediate cease-fire.
But South Asia expert Michael Kugelman, from the Atlantic Council international affairs think-tank, said the fighting showed little sign of ending soon, particularly with Gulf states "bogged down by their own war."
"Pakistan appears intent to keep hitting targets in Afghanistan, and the Taliban determined to retaliate with operations on Pakistani border posts and potentially with asymmetric tactics – from launching drones to sponsoring militant attacks in wider Pakistan," he told AFP.
"There are no off-ramps in sight."
