Islamabad, July 22: Human rights organisation Amnesty International, Wednesday said that the Pakistani airstrikes on Afghanistan’s Omid Rehabilitation 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.
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).
“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. (IANS)
