Life after Quetta blasts: For witnesses, it’s a day they’ll never forget

Media-men and volunteers also bore the brunt of the explosions.

QUETTA: “I was shifting the injured and the dead to different hospitals, when suddenly I heard another big explosion. I thought the sky had blown up, I saw myself wet with blood,” says Babul, the Balochistan in-charge of the Edhi Foundation.

Babul is now admitted in Akram Hospital, after suffering serious injuries in the third blast of a series of explosions in Quetta on Thursday. He had heard about a suicide attack on Alamdar Road, and had rushed to the spot with other volunteers. He was driving an ambulance when he too became a victim.

“I tried to open the door of my ambulance, then I jumped on the floor through the window. I saw my friend who was injured,” Babul recalled, adding that this was when he fell unconscious.

Jamil Ahmed, who works for Samaa TV as a satellite engineer, was also present at the blast, and received minor wounds.  “My reporter and cameraman ran towards the Snooker Club. I was stretching the cable for live coverage of the blast. After a few seconds, I heard an explosion which threw me towards the wall.” Later, he heard that his friends, the channel’s reporter and cameraman, had died. Now, he says, he’s trying to forget those fearful minutes where he tried to look for his friends – but he can’t.

Muhammad Ibrahim, the driver accompanying Jamil, says he’s driven to many blast locations – but this was the deadliest, and it has changed his life. “I saw many bodies scattered in pieces on the floor, I saw a man who was badly injured coming towards me. I took him to the Civil Hospital.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 14^th, 2013.