New York, July 16 (IANS) US-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for an impartial investigation into possible war crimes following Pakistan’s recent strikes in Afghanistan, expressing grave concern over civilian casualties.
The rights body noted that although civilian casualties alone are not conclusive evidence of “laws-of-war violations”, such reports of civilian deaths heightened the urgent need for independent probes of “possible war crimes by either attacking or defending forces.”
“International humanitarian law requires warring parties to take all feasible precautions to minimise civilian harm. Attacking forces must at all times distinguish between civilians and civilian objects on the one hand, and combatants and military objectives on the other, and only target the latter,” the HRW stated.
“Defending forces must, to the extent feasible, protect civilians under their control from the effects of attack, including by avoiding locating military objectives near densely populated areas. However, violations by one side do not relieve the other of its own obligations,” it added.
Last month, Pakistani airstrikes in three provinces in eastern Afghanistan reportedly killed and injured several civilians, including women and children.
According to the HRW, Pakistani authorities maintained that the strikes targeted militants responsible for attacking Pakistani security personnel days earlier in Karachi but provided no detail about the operation.
Citing the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the rights body said that in the first three months of 2026, cross-border attacks by Pakistani forces have killed and injured over 750 Afghan civilians, most from airstrikes in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
The HRW also referred to an earlier UNAMA report, which documented that Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan’s Kunar province on April 27 killed 7 civilians and wounded 79, including 13 women and 39 children.
“My daughter, Nila, who is 4 years old, was injured—she has lost her fingers. My brother, Ahmad, who was 11, was killed. I have lost my home, and my daughter has a permanent disability. This is the new reality of our life now,” HRW quoted an Afghan resident as saying.
Furthermore, the rights body highlighted the March 16 airstrike by Pakistani forces on the Omid Drug Rehabilitation Centre in Kabul that killed at least 269 civilians and injured more than 122, most of them patients.
Referring to its investigation into the incident, the HRW said it found no evidence that the Omid Centre was being used for military purposes, stating that the attack by Pakistan was “unlawfully indiscriminate.”
Additionally, it said, mortar attacks and shelling by Pakistani forces have led to the closure of 19 health facilities, where an already grave humanitarian situation was made worse because of Pakistan’s forced return of Afghan refugees to the area.
–IANS
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