Pakistani Airstrike Destroys Kabul Addiction Treatment Center, Survivors Fear Relapse

KABUL (Afghan Verified) -- A Pakistani airstrike destroyed the Umid Camp addiction treatment center in Kabul on Monday night, 25 Hoot, eyewitnesses said.

The Taliban administration reported more than 400 people killed and 265 wounded in the strike. UNAMA stated that 143 people were killed and 119 wounded. Pakistan denied targeting the center, saying its strikes hit Taliban military facilities in the capital. Independent groups and eyewitnesses confirmed Pakistani fighter jets struck the addiction treatment center.

Nazar Mohammad, a former heroin addict treated at Umid Camp two years ago, described seeing a plane drop bombs. "People were screaming from all sides, wounded people and bodies were scattered everywhere," he said. "We pulled four people out alive but injured from under the rubble, and the rest had lost their lives. The bodies were so damaged that they were unrecognizable."

Survivors expressed fears of relapsing amid limited rehabilitation facilities in Afghanistan. Mohammad, another patient, said he stayed at the center after treatment because he feared becoming addicted again. "We were able to fight and survive here, but now I don't know what to do or where to go."

Ahmad Bilal Timuri, a dentist who entered the center 20 days before the attack for ketamine addiction treatment, said he was on the path to recovery but now feels hopeless.

WHO Director for Afghanistan Ahmad Qasas said about 15 percent of the country's approximately 40 million population suffers from addiction. Experts cite poverty, unemployment and family problems as factors, worsened by few treatment centers.

Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada's 2022 opium ban reduced poppy cultivation from 232,000 hectares to about 10,000 hectares in 2025, per UN data, but spurred synthetic drug production and use. Wanda Felbab-Brown, a Brookings Institution researcher, said losing one center delivers a heavy blow to Afghanistan's limited treatment services.