Baby shot twice in attack survives
Nazia never got to name her daughter. Soon after dawn on Tuesday she gave birth to a baby girl at a hospital in western Kabul. Alongside other mothers and their newborns they shared their first precious moments together. They would have only three hours.
Even for a country that has endured decades of conflict and witnessed the worst savageries of war, what followed has left Afghanistan reeling at its cruelty. About 10am, three gunmen blasted their way into the hospital and opened fire in the maternity ward. Mothers and infants were slaughtered where they lay.
When the shooting stopped at least 24 people were dead, among them two babies and several mothers and nurses. Amid the carnage Nazia’s daughter lay bleeding, shot twice, her right leg shattered by a bullet but miraculously still alive. Her mother was dead beside her. As the baby underwent surgery on Wednesday to save her leg, Nazia was being buried a few kilometres away. Rafiullah, the child’s father, laid his wife to rest and returned to the hospital, where he named the girl Nazia.
‘‘On Tuesday morning, my world, my life, ended,’’ Rafiullah told via a doctor. ‘‘I am glad my daughter is alive, but my wife is gone.’’
As a gun battle between the militants and Afghan special forces raged for hours at the hospital, the latest casualties of Afghanistan’s endless war were rescued by parents, nurses and local troops who braved the crossfire to carry them to safety. Some of the babies were soaked in the blood of mothers they would never know.
At least 18 children were rescued, most now thought to be motherless. Moved to other hospitals, the babies are ranged in cots and incubators, unaware of the frantic search to trace next of kin.
‘‘It is beyond shocking that innocent babies could be killed, some before they even had a name,’’ said Dr Noor ul-Haq Yousafzai, director at the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, which has given several babies refuge. ‘‘I cannot imagine anything more cowardly.’’
At Indira Gandhi hospital, still besieged by families seeking news of mothers and children lost in Tuesday’s carnage, doctors were stunned at what they had seen this week. ‘‘We set Nazia’s fracture, so she will be able to walk when she grows up,’’ Dr Yousafzai said. ‘‘But to see a newborn baby, just three hours old, shot twice. Everyone is shocked. This is inhuman.’’
No-one had claimed responsibility for the hospital attack. The assault bears the hallmarks of Islamic State, which has struck the majority Shia neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi many times before. The group did claim responsibility for a suicide bombing on a funeral in Nangarhar, eastern Afghanistan, that killed almost 40 at the same time as the hospital attack. Hours earlier, the head of Isis in south Asia had been arrested at a house in Kabul.
The United States has blamed Islamic State militants – not the Taliban – for the attack on the hospital, and it renewed calls for Afghans to embrace a troubled peace push with the Taliban insurgency.
But it was unclear if the US declaration would be enough to bolster the peace effort and reverse a decision by the Kabul government to resume offensive operations against the Taliban.
US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad blamed Islamic State for both attacks, saying the group opposed any Taliban peace agreement and sought to trigger an Iraq-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.
‘‘Rather than falling into the Isis trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity,’’ Khalilzad said.
An affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar bombing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
The Taliban denied involvement in either attack, but the government accused the group of fostering an environment in which terrorism thrives or of working with other militant groups who could have been involved, straining US efforts to bring the insurgents and Afghan government together.
The attacks were another setback to President Donald Trump’s stalled plans to bring peace to Afghanistan and end America’s longest war. A February 29 USTaliban deal called for a phased US troop withdrawal and for the Afghan government and Taliban to release some prisoners by March 10, when peace talks were to start. –