Pakistan rejects Amnesty probe call over Kabul rehab-center strike

Pakistan has rejected Amnesty International’s call for an independent investigation into its March 16, 2026, airstrike on Kabul’s Omid Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre, where the United Nations says at least 269 civilians were killed and 122 injured.

The dispute intensified after Amnesty published its investigation on July 21 and Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry rejected the allegations at a July 23 briefing. Amnesty said the strike should be investigated as a possible war crime. Pakistan said its operations in Afghanistan were lawful acts of self-defense directed at terrorists and logistical-support sites, not a medical or rehabilitation facility.

What Amnesty said it found

Amnesty said it reviewed more than 60 photographs and videos, more than 30 satellite images and 11 interviews with employees, former employees, witnesses, relatives and people involved in the evacuation after the attack.

It said the Omid center was a drug-treatment facility and that its review found no evidence supporting Pakistan’s claim that the site was being used to store weapons or ammunition or for another military purpose. Amnesty said the attack may have violated international humanitarian law protections for medical facilities, as well as the rules requiring distinction, precaution and proportionality.

Amnesty called for a transparent, thorough, independent and impartial investigation, particularly into the decision-making and targeting process. Its characterization of the attack as possibly amounting to a war crime is a legal assessment and allegation, not a final judicial finding that a war crime occurred.

Pakistan disputes the target description

At a July 23 Foreign Ministry briefing, Pakistan rejected Amnesty’s conclusions. The ministry said Pakistani military operations inside Afghanistan were conducted in self-defense and targeted terrorists and logistical-support bases. It disputed the description of the Omid site as the intended target.

Pakistan’s position conflicts with Amnesty’s open-source conclusion that it found no evidence of weapons storage or military use at the center. The public record does not show that Pakistan has agreed to Amnesty’s proposed independent investigation.

The central factual question remains unresolved: Was the Omid center solely a protected rehabilitation and medical facility, or did it have a military function that Pakistan says justified the strike? Answering that question would require access to the intelligence available to commanders, the target-selection process, any warnings and precautions, the facility’s actual use and the expected military advantage and civilian harm.

What the U.N. verified

UNAMA, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, independently verified at least 269 civilian deaths and 122 injuries from the strike. It warned that the actual toll could be significantly higher. The casualties were reported largely among patients at the facility.

A March 17 UNAMA statement identified the affected site as the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital and raised concerns about the impact on civilians and medical services. A later UNAMA human-rights assessment provided the independently verified casualty figures used in the current dispute.

The U.N. count is lower than the Taliban authorities’ earlier claim of more than 400 deaths and should not be combined with unverified higher estimates. It is the strongest publicly documented baseline for the human cost while the legal and factual questions remain unsettled.

Why medical-facility protection matters

International humanitarian law gives medical facilities special protection. Parties to a conflict must distinguish civilian objects from military objectives and take feasible precautions to reduce civilian harm. If there is doubt about whether a medical facility is being used for acts harmful to an opposing force, the facility is generally presumed to retain its protection.

Even when a party alleges military misuse, the legality of an attack depends on the evidence of that use, whether an effective warning was feasible, the precautions taken and whether the anticipated civilian harm was excessive in relation to the expected military advantage. Those are questions for a competent investigation, not matters settled by competing public statements alone.

What remains unresolved

No public investigation has established whether the facility contained weapons, whether any alleged military activity occurred there, what intelligence Pakistan relied on or whether warnings were issued. Amnesty’s review used imagery, video, weapons analysis and interviews, but it did not have access to classified targeting intelligence or the full military decision record.

The dispute is unfolding amid escalating Pakistan-Afghanistan hostilities and competing accusations over militant sanctuaries. For civilians, medical workers and humanitarian organizations, the case is a test of whether protections for treatment centers can be enforced during cross-border conflict.

The established facts are the March 16 strike, UNAMA’s independently verified toll of at least 269 civilian deaths and 122 injuries, Amnesty’s July 21 call for an investigation and Pakistan’s July 23 rejection. Whether the attack violated international law remains unresolved.

Sources

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