‘This is the saddest moment’: families search for loved ones on Eid after Kabul hospital strike | Afghanistan

Sohrab Faqiri spent Eid, the Muslim festival marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, searching for the grave of his brother, who was buried in a massive Pakistan airstrike in Kabul this week.

Pakistan’s bombing campaign, targeting what it says are terrorists and military infrastructure in neighboring Afghanistan, appeared to have gone catastrophically wrong. A rehabilitation center for drug addicts was hit Monday nightaccording to the United Nations and the Afghan authorities. The UN’s provisional death toll is 143 people, while the Taliban administration puts the figure at more than 400 dead.

Faqiri’s brother, Qais, a tailor and father of a 10-year-old boy, has been treated for the last three months at the facility, called Omid or “Hope”. Faqiri rushed there after the airstrike, but could not find him among the survivors. He spent the next two days visiting hospitals in Kabul, but there was no sign of Qais. Then, by chance, he saw a video of a mass burial by the authorities of the victims of the airstrikes and spotted his brother.

Thursday – marked as Eid in Afghanistan – he went to the hill cemetery on the outskirts of Kabul, where the burial took place. There he found rows of stones planted along lines of upturned earth. But there were no names to identify any of the bodies.

“The worst of all is that his grave is not known to us,” Faqiri said while speaking at the cemetery and burst into tears. “It is the saddest moment for a person on Eid day to search for the body of his brother.” He didn’t have the heart to tell their mother yet.

The attack occurred just as patients were returning to their dormitories after gathering for Tarawih, the special nighttime prayers during Ramadan, when worshipers ask for forgiveness of their sins.

Wali Nazir Mohammad (23) was tired after the prayers and went to his bed, in one of the smaller buildings that housed about 20 patients in a single room. When the explosion woke him, the room and some of his fellow patients were on fire. Many in the room were dead and others were screaming for help.

His waist and leg were in severe pain. He said that the room was not hit directly, but shrapnel came through the walls and cut into him. About half an hour later, an ambulance took him to Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, one of Kabul’s main medical facilities. He said one of the large buildings took a direct hit.

“I have a message for our government: please take our revenge,” Mohammad said, speaking from his hospital bed. “If the government cannot take our revenge, I ask them to give us weapons.”

Juma Khan Nael, of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said many of the patients had completed their treatment and would be discharged the next day. He said the fire ignited by the bombing could be seen by thousands.

“That fire was unimaginable, it could not be controlled, no one could help those trapped by it,” he said.

When Nael arrived at the site the morning after the bombing, rescue workers were still digging through the rubble. They found hands, feet and pieces of flesh, not whole bodies. The smell of burning meat hung in the air.

Maisam Shafiey, from the Norwegian Refugee Council aid group, said when he arrived at the scene the next morning, smoke was still rising, while in another part of the site, a few patients remained behind.

Shafiey believed many of the victims were together in one large structure. “A big building was hit. There’s nothing there now. The roof collapsed. Everything was rubble,” he said.

Afghan authorities say 408 are dead and 265 injured. Islamabad, what insists it hit a military targetsaying that terrorists who attack Pakistan are harbored by the Taliban.

Georgette Gagnon, the deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, expected her organization’s death toll to rise. She said it appeared several hundred were killed and injured.

She said the drug treatment center is inside a facility run by the Afghan de facto administration. Before 2015, the place was a US military base. “We call on the parties to de-escalate and recommit to a ceasefire,” she said.

Dejan Panic, the country director of Emergency, an Italian NGO that runs a major hospital in Kabul, said he heard two loud explosions; the airstrike took place about six miles away over the city.

The hospital received 24 wounded and three dead bodies that night, with many suffering from shell injuries – metal shrapnel that had penetrated their bodies. These days, such injuries were rare in Afghanistan, Panic said, compared to the war years before 2021 Taliban takeover.

One man broke his femur jumping from a second-story window to escape the fire. Another was in danger of bleeding to death with a severed femoral artery, which carried blood to the legs, but was brought to hospital in time to undergo surgery.

The less injured patients told Panic they were happy about their treatment at the rehabilitation facility. Drug addicts were a common sight in Kabul before the Taliban took power, but have been taken off the streets. At the Omid center, patients were taught skills such as carpentry, tailoring and electrical work.

“The patients said they were getting good food, clothes and a second chance at life,” Panic said.