KABUL: Sahil ran his finger down the list of wounded admitted to Kabul’s Emergency Hospital but could not find his brother’s name. He has been trying to find him since the early morning, after a blast at a drug rehabilitation center in the Afghan capital killed hundreds of patients.
Sahil’s brother was at the facility when Pakistani airstrikes hit the Afghan capital on Monday evening.
Sahil first went to the rehabilitation center from where security officials sent him to look at other hospitals. The center is known as Camp Omid. The word “omid” means hope.
“When they told us this, I came here to check the list,” he said. “He was a patient at the camp. He was bedded there. At the camp, I could only see ambulances, still carrying the dead bodies.”
At least 408 people were killed and 265 injured in the fire, according to Afghan Ministry of Interior data.
While Afghan officials blamed Pakistani strikes for the deadly blast, Islamabad denied responsibility, with its information minister saying the military had targeted “terrorism-sponsoring military installations.”
At the site, rescuers were still combing through the wreckage of the 2,000-bed Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital.
People who arrived there like Sahil were sent to look for their family members at four different trauma centers.
A middle-aged man, who arrived in the Emergency Hospital from the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, has found his relative there.
“Finally, I found him here,” he said. “He is alive, but in critical condition.”
Another man advised others to search at yet another clinic: “Seven people are in beds at Ibni Sina Hospital. The larger numbers are in Wazir Akbar Khan.”
Shir Mohammad, who was looking for his brother-in-law, told Arab News he had visited all the hospitals.
“We could not find him,” he said. “Do you have another list?”
For Sahil, too, the search had to continue.
In the crowd of men and women checking names on the patients’ list, someone directed them to the morgue, where unidentified bodies were kept.
Some bodies were so badly burned that their faces were unrecognizable.
Sahil was sure that none of them was his brother.
“Now I need to go to Wazir Akbar Khan,” he said. “Mohammad Yehya is my brother. He is 25-years-old.”
