Kabul – Rocked by Rockets

Rockets rocking the capital

An early morning in Kabul was rocked when sound of blasts reverberated throughout the capital.

8:20 A.M. I heard a blast, sounds very near. Not as loud as a bomb blast, and even initially I thought it was a car incident. The second blast came afterwards. It was not at all car incident, but rocket attacks toward the Kabul police headquarters about a block away from where I am working.

A reporter and I immediately ran to the site. A big fire was seen on the emptied road. The police tried hard to seal the area from onlookers and prevented the journalists, photographers, and cameramen to get closer.

“The attacker is still here,” said a police, “he is running away and we are looking for him. It’s very dangerous.”

Police is quick in cleaning up the debris

The road is messy. This area was full of street hawkers and in the morning it was very busy of people shopping. I saw many shoes and sandals, offered at roadside, left away by the scared owners.

The insurgency came from a truck loaded with five rockets covered under piles of hay. Two of the rockets were detonated. Another rocket apparently was fired from the neighborhood directed to the Police Headquarters but fell down in the middle of crowds of the busy shops and street hawkers.

All of the victims are civilians. The latest news was five killed and five others were wounded, including two police. About an hour and half later, the site was cleared and the attacker vehicle was lifted from the scene.

Somewhere near the police office, I saw a scattered body of a beggar. Head, pairs of legs, pairs of arms, fingers, were all separated on a dirty sheet, the place he used to sit down waiting for alms. There was a plastic full of small changes, apparently his sole earnings after sitting down here the whole morning. His mouth showed his teeth, in a way telling of an inexplicable pain.

The road in front of the police office is a popular place for beggars. One by one, in a row of a dozen, they wait for the alms from the thousands of passers-by. A woman clad in burqa with a poor baby cries the whole day. Another man with no hand and leg lies down on the street, showing his missing body parts, to knock the sympathy of the people. Every of them try to show worst of their suffering, and the scattered body parts in front of my eyes were one of those poor bodies.

But hours after, the body parts of a beggar is still there

This was already two hours after the blast. And this scattered body of the beggar was still there, untouched. I have been to several bomb blast incidents, where the police usually evacuated the victims as soon as possible so that none would be seen by the journalists. But today, besides this poor beggar’s destroyed body, the wall of the office was also still decorated by bloodshed. Was that because of they regard this victim as no value – just a beggar roadside – that they did not even have time to handle his body in fast and proper manner?