Afghan authorities say 400 have been killed and 250 wounded in a Pakistani attack on a clinic in Kabul.
Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of bombing a hospital treating drug addicts in the capital Kabul on Monday. Pakistan rejects the accusations and says they did not hit civilian targets, The Guardian reports.
Pakistani authorities call the accusations false and misleading.
Sharafat Zaman, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, stated a preliminary death toll of 200 people in a television interview. Later on Tuesday morning, the figure was adjusted upwards. He said all parts of the substance abuse treatment center were destroyed.
AFP journalists at the scene counted at least 30 dead bodies as medical teams worked to help the injured. Local television stations showed images of firefighters battling to extinguish flames amid the rubble.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Information dismissed the allegations as baseless. They claimed the attacks were aimed at military installations and terrorist infrastructure, not civilian targets.
– Pakistan’s targeting was precise and accurately carried out to ensure that no civilians were harmed, it said in a statement.
The attack came hours after the two countries fired at each other along the border, in which four people were killed on the Afghan side. The fighting has been going on for three weeks and is the deadliest between the neighboring countries in several years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of harboring militant groups that carry out attacks inside Pakistan. Afghanistan denies these accusations.