Taliban claim Pak airstrikes kill 408 in Kabul hospital

Over 400 people were killed and 250 injured in an air strike by Pakistan on a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, a spokesman of the Afghan Taliban government said on Tuesday, a sharp escalation in the conflict between the neighbours.  
Pakistan rejected the claim as false and misleading and said it “precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure” on Monday night.
“The visible secondary detonations after the strikes clearly indicate the presence of large ammunition depots,” Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a post on X.
The air strike came hours after China said it remained ready to continue efforts to ease tensions between the South Asian Islamic nations and urged both to avoid expanding the war and return to the negotiating table.
The conflict that began last month is the worst ever between the neighbours who share a 2,600-km (1,600-mile) border. It had ebbed amid attempts by friendly countries, including China, to mediate and end the fighting 
before flaring up again, this time just days before the Eid al-Fitr festival that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The escalation comes amid wider instability in the neighbourhood where the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation have plunged the Middle East into a crisis.
At the site, a blackened single-storey structure bore the marks of flames. In other places, buildings were reduced to heaps of wood and metal, with only a few bunk beds still intact in some, while blankets, personal belongings and bedding were strewn about.
Interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qanie said 408 people were killed and 265 injured. Afghan authorities said the dead and the wounded were taken to hospitals around Kabul but did not give details of how many bodies had been recovered and how the casualties had been counted.
Residents said the hospital was at a site where a military base was previously located.
Witnesses said they heard three bombs exploding just as people in the hospital were completing evening prayers and two of them struck rooms and patient areas.
“The whole place caught fire. It was like doomsday,” said Ahmad, 50, who said he was under treatment at the facility and gave only his first name. “My friends were burning in the fire, and we could not save them all.”