Pakistan should be investigated for a possible war crime for attacking a drug rehabilitation centre in Afghanistan earlier this year, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
An alleged missile strike flattened the Omid Rehabilitation and Treatment Centre on 16 March as the conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan escalated.
The attack killed 269 people and wounded hundreds more, mostly patients undergoing treatment for substance abuse.
Pakistan denied striking the hospital and insisted that its target was miles away.
The Pakistani information ministry claimed its forces had attacked a “military terrorist ammunition and equipment storage site” called Camp Phoenix.
However, Amnesty said its investigation found no evidence to back Pakistan’s claim that it had targeted a military facility.
The rights group accused Islamabad of violating a sacred international humanitarian exception granted to medical facilities to protect civilians in wartime.
The Omid centre, a newly renovated 2,000-bed facility, was a centrepiece of the Taliban government’s campaign to tackle drug abuse in the country.
It was adjacent to a former Nato base called Camp Phoenix where the US military once trained troops for the Afghan National Army.
Amnesty said it gathered satellite imagery and local testimonies in the wake of the attack which confirmed that Omid was an active medical facility.
The group said it verified over 60 photos and videos of the facility and spoke with serving and former staff of the rehabilitation facility as well as the adjacent Ibn-e-Sina Hospital.
Amnesty shared the findings of its investigation with The Independent.
One satellite picture shows dozens of patients queuing at the facility, including in the main patient area and the administrative building, just three days before the strike.
Several witnesses living nearby also confirmed that the facility was used for treating patients at the time of the attack.
Most of the dead bodies were recovered from the dining hall and kitchen, photos and videos analysed by Amnesty showed, indicating the attack took place when many of the patients were gathered to eat dinner.
“One of the buildings which was hit was used for storage of wood and coal,” a witness told the group. “When I visited, I saw remnants of wood and coal. There were many clothes. There were many shoes. These were not military shoes.”
Amnesty found there were at least two signboards in local languages near the main gate stating that it was a drug rehabilitation and treatment centre.
There were more than 1,000 patients inside the facility when the attack took place at around 9pm, a staffer said.
The airstrike was so devastating, a witness recalled, that he could not move around the wreckage without finding a body.
“I rushed to help anywhere I heard noise and calls for help. After a while I was no longer hearing any voices,” a local healthcare worker told Amnesty. “Anywhere I stepped, there was a dead body.”
Amnesty accused Pakistan of failing to check whether the target was a military objective. “This was a lethal failure by Pakistan to comply with its obligation to do everything feasible to verify whether the target was a military objective,” said Isabelle Lassee, Amnesty International’s acting regional director for south Asia.
“The attack on the Omid Centre constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law, possibly amounting to a war crime.”
Striking a medical facility whose details had been publicly available for over a decade, she claimed, reflected a “major failure in military planning by Pakistan” that led to significant loss of civilian life.
“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,” Ms Lassee said.
Pakistani authorities should also prosecute any person found criminally liable, including under the doctrine of command responsibility, she argued.
The Independent has contacted Pakistan’s foreign ministry for comment.
