In the cool quiet before dawn, Kabul’s streets often echo with the distant call to prayer and the gentle murmur of a city at rest, wrapped in the dusty light of early morning. Here, among humble homes and neighbourhoods stitched between hillsides, life has learned to move in rhythms both slow and steeped in resilience. But when night falls and the ordinary becomes interrupted by thunderous force, those rhythms can shatter in an instant — leaving behind a silence far heavier than the hush that precedes it.
Late on a March evening, residents in the eastern districts recounted how the air seemed to tremble with the sound of explosions, jolting a restless city into a state of alarm. What followed was described by those who lived through it in stark, almost surreal imagery: fires consuming structures, smoke rising like slow spectres from once‑quiet corners of a campus where people sought healing, and voices struggling against the roar of destruction. Ambulance drivers and neighbours alike spoke of scenes where “everything was burning, people were burning” as they tried to make sense of the devastation unfolding around them.
The strike struck a place that had, until that night, been associated with care and recovery. The Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, a vast facility treating thousands of people with substance dependencies, stood on ground that once served as a foreign military base. Converted into a rehabilitation centre, it was a sanctuary for those wrestling with some of life’s most personal battles — until it became, abruptly and tragically, a theatre of violence.
By the first light of morning, the scale of loss began to emerge. Afghan government spokespeople reported that hundreds of people — patients, medical workers, and visitors alike — had been killed or wounded as walls crumbled and fires raced through wards. Rescuers, guided by the flicker of flashlights, combed through charred rubble for signs of life, their efforts underscored by the blurred outlines of what had been ordinary rooms mere hours before.
Amid the shock and grief, the question of cause and intent lingered in the air like dust in the dawn. Afghan authorities pointed their sorrowful gaze toward Pakistan, asserting that its air forces had carried out the strike. Islamabad rejected this narrative, insisting that its operations were aimed at militant infrastructure and not civilian facilities, and that any damage to the rehabilitation centre was collateral rather than deliberate. Around the world, diplomats and international observers urged calm, called for investigations and respect for humanitarian law, and lamented the tragic toll on structures meant for care rather than conflict.
For the families who came to the shattered site at daybreak, the debate of intent mattered less than the palpable absence where loved ones once were. Mothers stood with arms folded, hands trembling, as they searched among the wreckage for those who did not return. Ambulances ferried the wounded to overwhelmed hospitals. In the aftermath, the cries and prayers of the bereaved mingled with the sunrise, creating an altogether different kind of morning chorus — one heavy with loss, memory, and unspoken questions.
In moments like these, the fragile boundary between sanctuary and battlefield seems to evaporate, leaving behind a landscape marked by both human vulnerability and the far‑reaching impacts of tensions between neighbours. As Kabul’s residents gathered amid debris and embers, there was an almost palpable sense that, in the slow unfolding of the day, this tragedy would shape not only immediate grieving but also the long arcs of dialogue and possible reconciliation that must follow. Events such as this — where places of healing become scenes of loss — remind us how intertwined our shared hopes and shared heartbreaks can be, even in the same breath of dawn.
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Sources Reuters Al Jazeera The Guardian AP News Financial Times