Pakistan rejects Taliban claim of drug rehab attack, calls it deliberate disinformation

Pakistan has rejected Afghanistan’s claims that the country attacked a rehabilitation hospital in Kabul, killing 400 people and wounding 250 others.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MoIB) went to

The ministry thus rejected Afghanistan’s claims as “false and misleading”, adding that on the night of March 16, “Pakistan precisely attacked military facilities and terrorist support infrastructure, including the storage of technical equipment and ammunition of the Afghan Taliban and Fitna al-Khawarij in Kabul and Nangarhar.”

MoIB added: “The post-attack detonation of the stockpiled ammunition used by Master Terror Proxy also completely contradicts the false claim.”

Read: Precision strikes hit Taliban-linked sites in Kabul and Nangarhar

According to Hamdullah Fitrat, deputy spokesman for the Taliban, the airstrike took place at 9:00 p.m. on Monday and targeted the Omid addiction treatment hospital.

Fitrat wrote that “large sections” of the 2,000-bed facility had been destroyed, with “serious concerns about a high number of casualties.” The death toll had reached 400 and 250 injured, the spokesman added, adding that rescue teams were working to control the fire and recover the remaining bodies.

MoIB, in response, tweeted that Omid Hospital was actually several kilometers from Camp Phoenix, “the terrorist military equipment and ammunition storage site attacked just last night.” The ministry added: “It can also be clearly seen that the actual hospital is a multi-story structure,” comparing it to the “military/terrorist infrastructure actually attacked.”

“The difference and the lie are obvious,” MoIB wrote. Additionally, he questioned: “Why would a supposed drug rehabilitation facility be located next to a lethal munitions storage site in a military camp?”

Fitrat tweeted a photo of a crowd and said, “Innocent civilians and addicts who were mostly killed last night in the 2,000-bed hospital due to shelling by (Pakistani military circles).”

The Ministry of Information responded by tweeting that the claim “spread by Afghan Taliban spokesperson using an old image to allege recent casualties is a clear case of deliberate disinformation.”

This, he added, was aimed at misleading public perception. MoIB added that the image presented is from May 2023 and had been shared by the Afghan Taliban Interior Ministry at the time. This, he said, exposed the falsity of the current claims.

Also read: China will continue mediation efforts between Pakistan and Afghanistan

“Recycling outdated images to support current allegations reflects a calculated attempt to fabricate a misleading narrative and create confusion regarding real events,” MoIB wrote. He added that such actions “undermine credibility and highlight a pattern of information manipulation by misrepresenting archival material as current evidence.”

The ministry concluded the tweet by saying that the Taliban regime’s claim is “rejected as false and misleading, intended to distort facts, mislead the public and serve propaganda objectives by projecting a fabricated version of events.”

In yet another tweet, the Ministry of Information attached photos of the “official Afghan handler,” deleting the first official post that claimed a drug rehabilitation center had been attacked. He questioned whether the images were generated or whether the AI ​​did not withstand verification of the facts.

The development comes as Operation Ghazab Lil Haq, launched last month, continues following fresh clashes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It was launched after Afghan Taliban forces fired on multiple locations, prompting swift military retaliation by Pakistan.

Neighboring countries have since escalated hostilities along the border. Clashes intensified after Afghanistan launched a border offensive in response to earlier Pakistani airstrikes on terrorist positions.