UN revises Kabul rehab strike toll as Pakistan denies targeting civilians

Disputed toll and competing accounts of strike deepen crisis between Islamabad and Kabul.

The United Nations has recorded 143 deaths in an air strike on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul, significantly lower than the figure offered by Afghanistan’s Taliban government.

The attack on Kabul’s Omar Addiction Treatment Hospital on Monday night has sharpened a bitter dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan with the Taliban putting the casualties at more than 400 people killed and about 265 wounded.

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The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan provided its figure to the Reuters news agency on Wednesday.

The gap between the two counts underscores the difficulty of verifying casualty figures in the conflict as competing claims frequently come from Kabul and Islamabad. The latest wave of violence between the two countries began late last month.

Afghanistan’s Taliban administration has blamed Pakistan for the attack on the drug rehabilitation centre, and Pakistan has denied carrying it out.

Hamdullah Fitrat, a deputy spokesman for the Taliban administration, said the strike hit the hospital, a 2,000-bed facility, destroying large sections of the building and triggering fires that rescue teams worked through the night to contain.

Afghan government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid accused Pakistan of deliberately hitting civilian infrastructure and called the assault a “crime against humanity”. Mujahid said those killed and wounded were patients undergoing addiction treatment at the time of the strike.

Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, denied the allegation in an interview with Al Jazeera.

“We strongly refute and reject these allegations,” he said on Tuesday, insisting his country “only targeted terrorist infrastructure and military locations”.

The strike is the latest in a widening confrontation between the two neighbours, who have engaged in repeated cross-border clashes. Pakistan has also carried out air raids inside Afghanistan.

At the heart of the dispute is a long-running Pakistani accusation that the Taliban government shelters the Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, as well as outlawed Baloch separatist groups responsible for attacks on Pakistani soil.

Kabul has consistently denied providing sanctuary to the groups.

The World Food Programme said on Sunday that it had begun mobilising emergency food supplies for more than 20,000 Afghan families uprooted by the fighting, a figure that is likely to grow as the conflict shows no sign of abating.