‘There was only dust and smell of burnt flesh’
quetta — Survivors of a suicide blast which killed 128 people as it ripped through a crowded rally described scenes of panic and horror on Saturday, as hospitals struggled to cope with scores of wounded.
The attack in Mastung in Balochistan on Friday, claimed by the Daesh group, was one of the deadliest in Pakistan’s history.
More than 150 people were wounded when the suicide bomber detonated just as a local politician, Siraj Raisani, was standing to make a speech in a tent packed with supporters. He was among the dead.
“As he stood up, there was a huge bang,” said student Rustam Raisani, who was part of the security arrangements and was standing on the stage behind the politician.
“I could not see anything. There
was only dust and the smell of blood and burnt human flesh. I could hear voices screaming. “I tried to get up and I saw people who were trying to run towards the gate. They were trampling on dead bodies... Everybody was screaming.”
Raisani was speaking from the Civil Hospital in Quetta, where many of the survivors were taken.
The hospital was overflowing on Saturday, with so many people
crammed into corridors and relatives of victims sleeping on floors and in corners that it was difficult to walk through the building.
Witnesses and emergency workers have described seeing the injured piled into rickshaws in a desperate attempt to get them to hospital from the town, which has no electricity and little in the way of medical services.
In the ringing moments after the blast, survivors began to rush towards the exit, said witness Ghulam Hussain, who also spoke from his hospital bed where he was being treated for head injuries.
They were stepping on those on the floor, he saw. “It was a sort of stampede... I started to pull some of the people and scream for help.”
Luckily, he said, others from the crowd realised what he was doing and began to help him pull the wounded out of the rush.
“(Raisani) had just begun when something hit me,” Mansoor Ahmed, a 34-year-old activist with Raisani’s party, said from his hospital bed.
“I could hear very faint sounds of people screaming, and (there was) blood and human flesh. It was like a bad dream.” —