A mass funeral for some of the hundreds of victims of a Pakistani strike on a Kabul drug treatment centre was held in Afghanistan—with the Taliban government promising retribution but leaving the door open for talks to end the conflict.
On a rainswept hillside above Kabul, Afghan Red Crescent Society volunteers carried dozens of simple wooden coffins from a fleet of ambulances to a mass grave dug in the rocky ground by giant excavators.
The Taliban authorities have said that around 400 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in Monday’s strike—the deadliest yet in escalating violence between the two neighbours.
“Today is a sad day. I offer my condolences to Afghanistan, especially to the families of the martyrs,” Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani told mourners. “We will take revenge,” he added and warned those behind Monday night’s bombing:
We are not weak and helpless. You will see the consequences of your crimes.
But Haqqani, who until last year had a $10 million (€8.7 million) U.S. bounty on his head, also suggested that talks were the government’s preferred option to halt the fighting
We do not want war but the situation has come to this,,,So, we are trying to solve the problems through diplomacy.
Islamabad, which denies deliberately bombing the centre, accuses Kabul of harbouring extremists behind cross-border attacks on its territory. Afghanistan denies doing so.
