At least 400 people were killed and 250 others injured on Monday night after a Pakistani airstrike on a drug rehabilitation center in Kabul, Afghan officials said, in the deadliest attack of the three-month conflict between the two neighbors.
As emergency workers pulled bodies from the smoking rubble in the Afghan capital, Pakistani military and governments officials called statements from their Afghan counterparts “false claims.” They claimed responsibility for the strike, but said the target had been an ammunition depot.
A Taliban spokesman warned on Tuesday that Afghanistan would retaliate, further escalating the risk of all-out war between the countries, whose populations share deep cultural bonds and whose government officials regularly met until tensions sharply escalated in late February.
Pakistan accuses the Taliban government of harboring an Islamist terrorist group responsible for hundreds of attacks on in Pakistan in recent years. Though Pakistan’s ultimate objective remains unclear, it has pummeled Afghan military infrastructure with strikes that have also hit or damaged civilian homes, refugee camps and more than 20 health facilities, according to the United Nations.
The compound hit by the Pakistani airstrike on Monday housed a drug rehabilitation facility run by the Taliban government and was widely recognized as such by local residents. A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Health said 200 patients were living in the building that was struck and left in ruins.
A billboard atop an adjacent, charred building read “Support and Treatment Center, Omid” — or “hope” in the Dari language. On Tuesday, hundreds of people pressed against the compound’s entrance, many inquiring after relatives admitted to the center.
“The numbers are in the hundreds,” Jacopo Caridi, the head of the Afghanistan office for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a nonprofit, said about casualties after visiting the site. He said he had seen no military facilities in the immediate area.
A reporter who visited the site of the strike shortly after it was hit on Monday, and again on Tuesday, saw at least 80 bodies being pulled from the rubble or in body bags.
In a statement on Tuesday, Pakistan’s minister of information, Attaullah Tarar, said “All targeting has been done with precision only at those infrastructures which are being used by Afghan Taliban regime.”
Pakistani officials declared an “open war” against the Taliban government on Feb. 26, and have launched dozens of attacks on Afghanistan.
As of Sunday, at least 75 civilians had been killed and 115,000 others had been displaced, according to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.
The United States has said that Pakistan has a right to defend itself — a stance that Pakistani officials have in private said they interpret as a green light to conduct their operations. Pakistan has ignored calls for dialogue made by China, its primary partner, despite public mediation efforts over the past week.
Some facilities built during the U.S. war in Afghanistan have been repurposed by the Taliban authorities, including former military bases now housing religious schools. The Omid drug rehabilitation center was set in a former U.S. military base, less than three miles away from Kabul’s international airport.
By Tuesday, dozens of bloodstained mattresses lay scattered among the debris as firefighters and emergency teams carried bodies into ambulances, under the close watch of hundreds of armed personnel.
The destroyed building, Afghan officials said, was a 180-foot-long structure that was used for meals and prayer. In smaller adjacent buildings, the debris contained white and blue patient gowns, identical sandals, and bottles of medicinal syrup.
Pictures taken throughout the night and shared by emergency workers with The Times showed no sign of weapons, ammunition or military equipment in the targeted building.
Other buildings adjacent to the large structure, each containing 20 to 30 bunk beds, also caught fire. White and blue gowns and identical sandals that looked like part of uniforms distributed to patients, as well as bottles of syrup and pills, could be found in the debris.
Afghanistan has long been the world’s leading source of illegally produced opium, but a ban by the Afghan authorities led to a sharp decline in opium production in 2023. Still, the use of cannabis, methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs remains a major public health concern and Afghan officials have interned thousands of people suffering from drug addiction in recent years.
Mr. Tarar, the Pakistani minister, said that there had been secondary detonations at the site, a sign that ammunition depots had been hit.
Across the compound, the smell of burned flesh mixed, explosives and melted iron filled the air.
As flames were still raging in the early hours of Tuesday, Muhammad Haidari, 23, stood dumbfounded near the facility, in search for answers about his two uncles that he said had been admitted at the center in February.
“I don’t know if they are alive or dead,” Mr. Haidari said. “Each one has children and family waiting for them to return home.”
Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.
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