Afghans search for survivors, pick up the dead in Kabul

KABUL: A boy sobbed in the back of a car in Kabul on Friday, squeezed beside the coffin of a relative killed in the devastating blasts that quickly overwhelmed the city’s hospitals. He was among a crowd of people who gathered at the capital’s Emergency Hospital to collect the bodies of loved ones after Thursday’s sunset bombings outside Kabul airport.

Another Afghan, Abdul Majeed, came to the clinic to look for his brother, an 11thgrade student who was at the airport with no documents or papers, desperate to escape the “troubles” of his home country. “He wanted to fly abroad,” Majeed told AFP. “Unfortunately, he’s missing after the back-to-back blasts.”

The bombs ripped through crowds massed outside the airport, hoping to flee new Taliban rule as the deadline for evacuations drew closer.

Majeed said overnight he saw hundreds of people, dead and alive, brought to the hospital, a major trauma clinic. “I saw every one with my own eyes. My brother was not among them,” he said. “Since yesterday (Thursday), I have searched all the hospitals in Kabul but I have failed to find him.”

Others also came on foot, exhausted after a sleepless night, to sit in groups on the pavement outside the walls of the medical centre, waiting for news from within. One man emerged from the gates clutching his mobile phone, showing a picture to those gathered outside of a loved one receiving treatment. The bomb victim is lying in a bed, his eyes closed and face bandaged.

In a tweet sent out on Friday, the hospital authorities said the “situation is still quite critical”.

“Our three operating theatres in the hospital have been working all night long - the last surgery was at 4am. We have people in intensive care, in sub-intensive care.”