This story is published in collaboration with Zan Times.
On the night of 16 March, powerful explosions rocked Kabul. Pakistan said it had “successfully carried out precision airstrikes” targeting “Afghan Taliban regime terrorism-sponsoring military installations in Kabul and Nangarhar”. Attaullah Tarar, Pakistan’s minister for information and broadcasting, also said that the strikes targeted infrastructure belonging to “terror proxies”, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – the Pakistani Taliban.
Across the border, it was a different story. Taliban spokespersons said the strike hit a drug rehabilitation centre and hospital; the toll in lives is still unclear. Reporters at the scene counted at least 30 bodies recovered from the rubble. The Taliban’s deputy spokesperson, Hamdullah Fitrat, has said the toll was far higher, with around 400 reportedly dead and 250 wounded. Forensic laboratory technicians have reported over 100 deaths.
This latest attack adds to the growing human and humanitarian toll of what Pakistan, in late February, declared to be an “open war” on Afghanistan. Cross-border strikes have displaced thousands of families and killed or wounded uncounted numbers of civilians along the countries’ shared frontier. Meanwhile, Pakistan has continued its brutal drive to deport Afghan refugees, many of whom have lived in the country for decades and have little or nothing to go back to in Afghanistan.