Pakistan blamed by Afghanistan for hundreds of fatalities in Kabul hospital attack

(SeaPRwire) –   A purported airstrike on an Afghan hospital, which allegedly resulted in hundreds of deaths, is facing increasing examination—focused not just on the strike itself, but also on what critics characterize as a subdued international reaction.

According to Reuters, Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government stated that over 400 individuals were killed and hundreds injured when a strike hit Kabul’s Omid Hospital, a key drug rehabilitation center. The Associated Press reported that civilians, including children, have also lost their lives in intensifying cross-border strikes in Pakistan. 

These casualty numbers have not been independently confirmed.

This strike occurs against the backdrop of a swiftly escalating military campaign between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which has grown more severe over the past three weeks.

Cross-border airstrikes and skirmishes have spread across several provinces, with Pakistan targeting what it claims are bases of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—a militant group responsible for attacks within Pakistan and designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. The Taliban government has accused Islamabad of breaching Afghanistan’s sovereignty.

During a U.N. briefing on Wednesday, a spokesperson noted that the conflict has now entered its third week, with significant civilian consequences. U.N. humanitarian agencies reported that over 115,000 people have been displaced, more than 300 shelters damaged or destroyed, and at least 25 health facilities shut down or disrupted due to the violence.

Pakistan has refuted targeting a hospital, asserting that the operation hit militant infrastructure.

“Since the start of this counterterrorism effort, Pakistan has aimed to defend and safeguard its people … by targeting terrorists and terrorist infrastructure that are fostered and supported by the Afghan Taliban,” Prime Minister’s spokesperson Mosharraf Zaidi told Digital.

Zaidi stated that the strike was aimed at weapons and ammunition at Kabul’s Camp Phoenix, emphasizing, “There are no civilian hospitals in Camp Phoenix,” and suggesting that reports of a rehabilitation facility being hit might stem from “secondary explosions” caused by stored weapons.

Two days after the attack, the United Nations condemned the reported strike on Wednesday, with Secretary-General António Guterres, via a spokesperson, “strongly condemning” an airstrike that “reportedly led to the death and injury of civilians at a hospital,” and urging an independent inquiry.

Nonetheless, some analysts argue that the response is disproportionate to the incident’s magnitude.

“U.N. officials quickly condemned U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s regime as unlawful ‘aggression’ … Yet Pakistan’s airstrike on Kabul’s Omid Hospital—killing over 400 civilians—has only elicited a delayed ‘strong condemnation’ … and standard calls for ‘de-escalation’,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer told Digital.

“This cautious reaction—no personal outcry from Guterres, no emergency session naming Pakistan, and no comparable outpouring from U.N. rapporteurs or agencies such as WHO, U.N. Women, and UNICEF—exposes blatant hypocrisy,” he stated. “When hundreds of vulnerable Afghans perish in a hospital, the U.N. offers temperate remarks. Yet when the U.S. or Israel can be held accountable—justly or not—the condemnation is immediate and intense. When some victims are deemed far more important than others, the U.N. reveals its cynical political agenda. This double standard does not uphold human rights; it undermines them.” 

Australian human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky echoed this criticism in a post on X, labeling the strike “an absolute massacre,” and highlighting what he described as a lack of global outrage: “World outrage? Zero. Could barely make it to page 17 in the newspaper here.”