Targeting Afghan civilians appears central to Pakistan’s strategy as airstrikes kill 400

New Delhi, March 17 (IANS/WISHAVWARTA) The situation in Afghanistan is going from bad to worse and in the latest attack by Pakistan, 400 people were killed in an airstrike. Officials said this escalation is a dramatic one and signals that Pakistan has no plans of stopping the war that it got into with Afghanistan.

This is the deadliest strike in Afghanistan following the one that took place in 2021 when the US troops were withdrawing from the country. In that attack, which was a suicide bombing, 169 Afghan civilians and 13 US service members were killed.

Since the start of the war in February, there have been repeated clashes between the two sides in the border areas. Pakistan has also used its air power extensively to subdue the Afghan Taliban.

Officials said that Pakistan knows that it cannot sustain boots on the ground with the Taliban. It has tried reaching out to the Taliban, but Kabul has remained firm that it wants no interference from Islamabad.

Another official said that Pakistan is attempting a regime change in Afghanistan. The targeting of a hospital is an attempt by Islamabad to send across a message to the Taliban that they would have to come to the negotiating table, the official added.

Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson, Mandullah Fitrat, said the airstrike had hit the hospital at around 9 p.m. local time. A large section of the 2,000-bed facility had been destroyed. He also said that the death toll so far stood at 400, while the number of those injured was at 250. Around 2,000 people were being treated at the drug treatment hospital when the strikes took place.

Fitrat said that rescue operations are on and teams are working to control the fire and recover the bodies. The casualties are likely to be higher, the spokesperson also said.

The ramifications of this strike could be huge, Afghanistan watchers said.

It is clearly a miscalculation by Pakistan, and in this act of madness, it has only managed to unite the Afghan people further. The Afghan people, who were initially not siding with the Taliban, started backing the regime after Pakistan threw out Afghan refugees. This was seen as an act of barbarism by the people of Afghanistan, and they started justifying the Taliban’s actions against Islamabad.

Pakistan was, however, quick to deny any role in the attack. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s spokesman, Mosharraf Zaidi, said that the allegations made by Kabul are baseless and no hospital was targeted.

Pakistan further said that the strikes precisely targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure that included technical equipment storage and ammunition storage of the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan continued to claim without proof that the Afghan Taliban is backing terror groups to target innocent Pakistani civilians.

Islamabad has been attacking Afghanistan since February 26. While Pakistan claims that it has hit military targets, the fact remains that there have been many misses as a result of which there have been a large number of civilian casualties.

With the latest strikes, there have been at least 475 civilian deaths, while 1,15,000 people have been displaced.

Officials said that Pakistan is out to destroy Afghanistan, and the targeting of civilians clearly shows that. Pakistan is also looking to take advantage of the fact that the world is focused on the war in Iran.

With no intervention from the rest of the world, Pakistan hopes to inflict maximum damage on the people of Afghanistan, officials also added.

Since the start of the war, Pakistan has been attempting to change the regime in Afghanistan. Islamabad realises that the regime has the backing of the people. This explains why so many civilians are being targeted.

Media accounts clearly suggest that the Afghan people are ready to go with their children to the border and fight against the Pakistan Army.

The Pakistan Army wants to dissuade the people from backing the Taliban and hence is resorting to killing civilians, officials also said.

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