India, March 19 -- Bulldozers dug pits in a cemetery in the Afghan capital ahead of a mass funeral on Wednesday for some of the victims of what officials have said was a Pakistani airstrike that hit a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kabul earlier this week.

The strike was the deadliest in an escalating conflict between the two neighbours, now in its third week. Afghan officials have put the death toll at 408 people, with 265 wounded. The toll could not be independently verified. Pakistan rejects Afghanistan's accusation that it targeted the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital, insisting its strikes in Kabul and eastern Afghanistan on Monday had been against military facilities. It has dismissed Afghan claims of hundreds of casualties as pr...