Rescue workers extricate bodies from an airstrike on a Kabul hospital blamed on Pakistan

Kabul, Afghanistan — Rescue workers were still digging bodies from the ruins of a drug rehabilitation hospital in the Afghan capital on Tuesday morning, where an overnight Pakistani airstrike killed at least 400 people at the facility, officials said.

Pakistan has denied an Afghan allegation that the hospital was targeted, saying Monday’s strikes in eastern Afghanistan did not hit any civilian targets.

Monday’s late-night strikes mark a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan that began late last month and has seen repeated cross-border clashes and airstrikes inside Afghanistan. International calls for a ceasefire have gone unheeded.

In a late-night post on X, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said the airstrike hit the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility in Kabul, at 9 p.m. local time. He said large parts of the facility had been destroyed and the death toll “so far” reached 400, while about 250 people were reported injured. No official death toll had been updated as of Tuesday morning.

Local television stations in X posted footage showing security forces using flashlights as firefighters struggled to put out the flames amid the rubble of the building.

The strike came hours after Afghan officials said an exchange of gunfire along their common border killed four people in Afghanistan, as the deadliest fighting between the neighbors entered its third week in years.

Afghan government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the strike in X, accusing Pakistan of “targeting hospitals and civilian sites to perpetrate terror”. Those killed were “innocent civilians and addicts,” he said.

“We strongly condemn this crime and such an act is against all accepted principles and a crime against humanity,” he said in a separate post on X.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman Musharraf Zaidi dismissed the allegations as baseless, saying no hospital in Kabul was targeted.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar posted on X early Tuesday morning that the Pakistani military had “conducted precision airstrikes” targeting military installations in Kabul and the eastern province of Nangarhar. “Technical support infrastructure and munitions storage facilities” were destroyed at two locations in Kabul, he said.

“All targeting was done precisely on the infrastructure used by the Afghan Taliban regime to support its multiple terrorist proxies,” he wrote.

Pakistan’s Information Ministry said Mujahid’s statement was “false and misleading” and aimed at inflaming sentiments, and described it as “illegal support for cross-border terrorism”. It said the targeting of Pakistan was “precisely and carefully carried out to ensure no collateral damage”.

The strike came hours after the UN Security Council called on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to immediately step up efforts to combat terrorism. Pakistan accuses Kabul of harboring militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, which it says carry out attacks inside Pakistan.

The unanimously adopted Security Council resolution did not specifically mention the attacks carried out in Pakistan but condemned “in the strongest terms all terrorist activities, including terrorist attacks”.

The Pakistani government has accused Afghanistan of providing safe havens to the Pakistani Taliban, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, as well as Baloch separatist groups and other militants who frequently target Pakistani security forces and civilians across the country. Kabul denies the allegation.

Fighting between the two neighbors began in late February after Afghanistan launched cross-border attacks in response to Pakistani airstrikes inside Afghanistan, which Kabul said killed civilians. The clashes disrupted a Qatar-brokered ceasefire in October, with dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants killed in previous fighting.

Pakistan has declared that it is at “open war” with Afghanistan. The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly in a region where al-Qaida and other militant groups, including the Islamic State group, still have a presence and are trying to revive.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari said on Saturday that Afghanistan’s Taliban regime had crossed a “red line” by deploying drones that injured several civilians in Pakistan last week.

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Ahmed reports from Islamabad and Bekatoros from Athens, Greece. Edith M. at the United Nations. Contributed by Lederer.