Ahmad, 50, watched as flames engulfed his friends at a Kabul drug rehabilitation center where he was undergoing treatment, unable to save them as they screamed for help following a Pakistani airstrike that left behind a scene he says looked like “Doomsday,” Reuters reports.
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government says at least 400 people were killed and 250 wounded in Monday night's attack, but Islamabad has denied targeting such a facility, saying it hit military installations and “terrorist support infrastructure”.
The attack is the latest episode in an armed conflict between the two Islamic nations that has intensified during the holy month of Ramadan.
Ahmad claims that he and his 25 fellow salon mates had gathered went back to the room after prayers when the attack took place and that he was the only one to survive the airstrike.
“The whole place was engulfed in flames. It was like Doomsday,” he told Reuters.
Mohammad Mian, who works in the hospital's radiology department, said many young men undergoing treatment were kept in large containers on campus and very few survived the attack.
“It was extremely scary,” he recounted. “Those who survived are those whose rooms were not destroyed and who were lucky. But in the places where the bombs fell, everyone there was killed,” he also told the Reuters agency.
Blackened walls, corpses under the rubble of Kabul hospital
Reuters reports that when its reporters visited the site on Tuesday, the blackened walls of the single-story building showed the fires that had ravaged the interior just hours before.
Elsewhere, structures had been reduced to piles of brick, metal and wood, and patients' personal belongings, including pillows, shoes and clothing, were scattered among the debris.
In Ahmad's bedroom, some bunk beds were still intact against one wall, the sheets untouched, while the room, with its ceiling ripped open to the blue sky.
Dr. Ahmad Wali Yousafzai, a medical officer at the hospital, says he heard three explosions, the shock waves of which sent some of his colleagues flying from wall to wall. The man says the hospital was housing about 2,000 patients at the time of the attack.
He says that as the fires broke out, screams and cries for help could be heard “from all directions”.
“We were too few to save everyone,” he laments.
Ambulance driver Haji Fahim claims he was among those who transported the bodies to a nearby hospital, moving at least eight bodies over the course of five hours.
“Now we are back again … there are still bodies under the rubble,” he said on Tuesday.
