“Doomsday” strike by Pakistan hits Kabul rehab centre

A senior Taliban official has said that Pakistan killed 408 people in an airstrike which targeted a drug rehab clinic in Kabul. The strike landed at 9pm on 16 March, allegedly wounded over 200, in addition to those killed. A Pakistani official said they had only targeted ‘military’ and ‘terrorist’ infrastructure.

Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat posted on X:

The Pakistani military regime carried out an airstrike at approximately 9:00 PM this evening on the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a 2,000-bed facility dedicated to the treatment of drug addiction. As a result of the attack, large sections of the hospital have been destroyed, and there are serious concerns about a high number of casualties.

Unfortunately, the death toll has so far reached 400, while around 250 others have been reported injured. Rescue teams are currently at the scene working to control the fire and recover the remaining bodies of the victims.

The information minister of Pakistan, Attaullah Tarar, shared the following details:

✅ 17 March 2026

✅ Pakistan’s Armed Forces successfully carried out precision airstrikes on the night of 16 March as a part of Operation Ghazab Lil Haq, targeting Afghan Taliban regime terrorism sponsoring military installations in Kabul and Nangarhar.

✅ Technical support… pic.twitter.com/b8YJkGC0cv

— Attaullah Tarar (@TararAttaullah) March 16, 2026

Doomsday scenes

Reporters on the scene found wreckage and charred bodies at the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital. Survivors described horrific scenes and a major loss of life. A guard at the medical facility named Ahmad told Reuters:

He and his 25 roommates had gathered in their dormitory after prayers when the attack occurred. He was the only survivor among them.

Recalling the aftermath, the guard likened the scene to “doomsday,” adding that the “the whole place caught fire.”

Hospital worker Mohammad Mian told Reuters:

many young people under treatment lived in large containers on the campus and very few survived the strike…It was extremely terrifying. Those who survived were the ones whose rooms were not destroyed and were fortunate. But the places where the bombs were dropped, everyone there was killed.

Speaking to reporters, ambulance driver Haji Fahim, who helped move bodies to another Kabul hospital, said:

Now we have come again … there are still bodies under the rubble.

Border tensions between the two countries, building for several months, have turned into a hot war.

Afghanistan-Pakistan border war

Fighting between the formerly US-occupied nation and Pakistan (itself a US partner) kicked off in February. At the time, the Canary reported how Pakistani officials were already calling the confrontation an ‘open war’ back in late February.

In an explainer Reuters said:

Allies-turned-foes ⁠Pakistan and Afghanistan’s worst fighting in years erupted last month, with Pakistani air strikes inside Afghanistan that Islamabad said targeted militant strongholds.

Afghanistan called the strikes a violation of its sovereignty that targeted civilians, and launched retaliatory operations.

Now a ubiquitous feature of warfare, drones have been deployed by both sides:

Over the last three weeks, both countries have launched air and drone strikes against each other and also engaged in ground firing across their 2,600-km (1,600-mile) border, with each claiming to have inflicted heavy damage and killed hundreds of opposition troops, without providing evidence.

With most of the world’s attention on the US-Israel assault on Iran, the Afghanistan-Pakistan war is slipping under the radar. Yet the legacies of US—and British—imperialism in the region continues to produce war, insurgency, and horrific outcomes for civilians on both sides of the border still known as the Durand Line (in honour of a British diplomat who died over a century ago).

Featured image via X/Canary