First person account: Streets crowded with mourners

SHIKARPUR:

I had just arrived at a local restaurant and placed my order, when I received a text message from a fellow worker. “I’ve heard a huge explosion here,” he wrote. His house lies on the boundary of Karbala-e-Moalla Imambargah in the Lakhidar area. I didn’t believe him and thought he was pulling my leg. But then the calls started frantically coming in: there had been what appeared to be a blast at the Imambargah.

I shouted for the waiter to cancel my order and by the time I was on my bike, rushing to the Imambargah, I was surrounded by ambulances and police mobile vans. We were all trying to get to Lakhidar as fast as we could.

The Imambargah lies at the heart of Shikarpur, a city of 400,000 to 500,000 people. If you stand at the centrally located Ghanta Ghar and call out, your voice can be heard crystal clear in the Imambargah. To one side lies the bazaar and to the other, hundreds of houses. The two-storey Imambargah is said to be around 200 years old. There are no security checks at this worship place and hundreds have offered their prayers here for decades, many taking their elderly parents or small children with them when they come here on Fridays.



This Friday, there was another kind of rush at the Imambargah. You could hear screams and the cries of the injured. The place was splattered with blood and smelled of burnt flesh. People crowded around, trying to find their loved ones among the casualties. Because this is not such a big city, many people here knew each other. They informed others if they had spotted their family members. They helped their friends search for their loved ones.

At first, I felt relieved because I couldn’t see so many bodies outside the Imambargah. But once I stepped inside, it was all I could see. There were bodies everywhere you looked.

As thousands rushed to the hospitals, doctors found themselves unable to cope. I went to the Rao Bahadur Uthodas Tarachand Hospital (RBUT), where police officials and Rangers mingled with desperate family members. For two or three hours, it was chaos. RBUT is just two kilometres from the Imambargah and it was the first port of call for many. Many blood donors arrived at the hospital, hoping to help. People picked up the dead and the injured so they could clear the hospital’s floors. Ambulances, doctors and police streamed in from Larkana, Sukkur, Jacobabad and Khandhkot.

One of the injured, Mohammad Ali Shah, said it was a suicide bombing. He said he recognised the bomber. On January 18, a man scaled the wall of Qazi Habibullah High School and was intercepted by the school’s guards. He ran away before the police could show up. The school’s headmaster wrote to the authorities informing them and telling them he feared a possible threat. The school is located in the same area as the Imambargah. Mohammad Ali says it is the same young man who he saw striding towards the prayer leader on Friday, before he blew himself up. Mohammad was praying on the first floor of the Imambargah and was saved. His father, praying on the lower floor, was killed.

Today, there is mourning – maatam – in every lane of Shikarpur. Many houses have as many as three deaths within their family from this attack.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2015.