“India unequivocally condemns Pakistan’s barbaric airstrike… Pakistan is now trying to dress up a massacre as a military operation,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in the wake of a Pakistani strike on the 2000-bed Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul late Monday.
“This is a cowardly and unconscionable act of violence… in a facility which can by no means be justified as a military target,” official spokesperson of MEA Randhir Jaiswal said.
He went further, calling the strike “a blatant assault on Afghanistan’s sovereignty” and “a direct threat to regional peace and stability,” language that signals New Delhi sees the attack as part of a wider pattern rather than a one-off strike.
The timing, during Ramzan, was not lost on India, “There is no faith, no law, and no morality that can justify the deliberate targeting of a hospital and its patients.”
Deputy Taliban spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said the facility was “largely destroyed,” adding, “Unfortunately, the death toll has so far reached 400, while around 250 others have been reported injured.”
On the ground, Afghan authorities described chaos, fires, collapsed structures, and families searching for missing relatives.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid accused Pakistan of crossing a red line. He said, Pakistan had “violated Afghanistan’s airspace and targeted a drug rehabilitation hospital,” calling it “a crime against humanity.”
He warned the Taliban would retaliate and declared there would be “no more diplomacy or talks.”
But Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the military had carried out “precision airstrikes” against “terrorist support infrastructure,” while Mosharraf Zaidi dismissed reports of civilian casualties as “constant lies.”
Islamabad has made clear the strikes are part of a broader campaign and will continue until what it calls militant sanctuaries inside Afghanistan are dismantled.
Background
The confrontation has been building since 2021, when Pakistan initially backed the Taliban’s return but soon turned on Kabul over rising attacks inside its own borders.
Islamabad says groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan are operating from Afghan soil. The Taliban denies this, and counters that Pakistan is using that claim to justify repeated cross-border strikes.
