Massacre in Kabul

Death toll rises to 24 after attack on maternity hospital

were providing medical care.

“One newborn baby had a fractured bone and we referred that baby to the Indira Gandhi Children’s hospital,” he said.

“The other 20 babies are hospitalised here and are in good health and under our observation.”

Outside the Ataturk Hospital, anxious relatives waited for news.

Qurban Ali, a 27-year-old father, came to see his newborn daughter Bakhtawar who was among those evacuated from Dashti Barchi.

His name was on a wristband the baby was given after she was born early Tuesday, a preterm baby.

Mr Ali said he was watching TV when he heard about the hospital attack.

“I immediately rushed to the hospital, got there but couldn’t find my wife or the baby,” he said.

His wife called him a short while later, crying and saying she had managed to flee from the attack but couldn’t rescue their baby.

The two rushed to Ataturk

Hospital after hearing the babies were evacuated there, and to their relief, found Bakhtawar.

“Thank God . . . my child and my wife both are unhurt,” said Mr Ali.

Others were not so fortunate. The family of 35-yearold nurse Maryam Noorzada, who worked with Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, at Dashti Barchi could not find her after searching all of Kabul’s hospitals.

Her brother-in-law, Mahdi Jafari, his eyes filled with tears, said the family would give DNA samples to see if the single charred, unclaimed body remaining at the morgue after the attack was her.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban insisted they were not involved.

In the past, most attacks in Dashti Barchi, home to the minority Shia Hazara community, were carried out by the Isil terror group.

In a televised speech hours after the attack, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced that Afghan security forces would no longer operate in the defensive posture taken in the wake of the peace agreement.

Instead, he called on security forces to launch attacks against Taliban insurgents.

AFGHAN officials yesterday raised the death toll from a militant attack on a maternity hospital in Kabul on Tuesday, saying 24 people were killed, including two newborn babies, their mothers and an unspecified number of nurses. Militants stormed the hospital in Dashti Barchi, a mostly Shia neighbourhood in the western part of Kabul, on Tuesday morning, setting off an hours-long shootout with the police. As the battle raged, Afghan security forces struggled to evacuate the facility, which is supported by the aid group Doctors Without Borders, carrying out babies and frantic young mothers. The interior ministry spokesman, Tareq Arian, said on Tuesday that 16 people were killed in the attack and more than 100 women and babies were evacuated from the building under fire. The new death toll of 24 came from Wahid Majroh, the deputy public health minister, who spoke at a press conference yesterday. He said 16 others were wounded in the attack. Of those evacuated, 21 newborn babies were initially brought to Kabul’s Ataturk Hospital where physician Sayed Fared said their staff TV speech: Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani