Islamabad: Leading human rights organisation Amnesty International on Wednesday said that the Pakistani airstrikes on Afghanistan’s Omid Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre earlier this year should be investigated as a possible “war crime” as no evidence has been found to support Islamabad’s claim that the facility was being used to store weapons, ammunition, or for any other military purpose.
The organisation said that the March 16 Pakistani airstrike on the 2000-bed Omid medical facility in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi area, which killed at least 269 civilians and injured several others, violated the special protection afforded to healthcare facilities under international Humanitarian Law (IHL), as well as the principles of “distinction, precaution and proportionality” designed to protect civilians.
“The attack on the Omid Centre constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law – possibly amounting to a war crime. Given the widely available information that the site had been used as a medical facility for more than a decade, this reflects a major failure in military planning by Pakistan that led to a significant loss of civilian life,” said Isabelle Lassee, Amnesty International’s Acting Regional Director for South Asia.
She noted that the strike reflected a “lethal failure” by Pakistan to comply with its obligation to do everything feasible to verify “whether the target was a military objective”.
“Pakistan must urgently conduct a transparent, thorough, independent, and impartial investigation into the attack – especially the decision-making process that led to the targeting of the facility – and make the results public. Where sufficient evidence exists, competent authorities should prosecute any person suspected of criminal responsibility, including under the doctrine of command responsibility,” Lassee noted.
She further stated that the investigation conducted by Amnesty International’s open-source investigators and weapons experts strongly indicated that the Pakistani military strike in Omid health facility was not a “legitimate military target” under international humanitarian law.
“The ‘evidence’ Pakistan has made public so far does not rebut the conclusion that this was an unlawful attack causing harm to civilians and civilian objects,” said Lassee.
Amnesty International noted that the attack was one of a series of air strikes conducted by the Pakistan military in Afghanistan amid escalating cross-border hostilities with the Taliban since October 2025.
It cited the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which documented more than 750 civilian casualties – 372 killed and 392 others injured – in Afghanistan between January and March 2026 alone.
Last month, as many as 36 civilians, including women and children, were killed while 163 others were injured in Pakistani military airstrikes in Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar, the Taliban authorities had confirmed.
Recently, the US-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) also called for an impartial investigation into possible war crimes following Pakistan’s recent strikes in Afghanistan, expressing grave concern over civilian casualties.
(IANS)
