Public Project
"There's No Humanity Left"
Hajar Sarwari was in labor with her second child at a west Kabul maternity ward on Tuesday morning when gunmen shot her twice in the abdomen, killing her and her unborn child. Her family buried her atop a hill under overcast skies on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Wednesday morning, one day after three gunmen killed 24 people in a Doctors Without Borders maternity ward. The baby remained in her womb.
Her mother wept uncontrollably, supported by a group of women in long black robes. Outside, her 6-year-old daughter Razia played and giggled in the courtyard.
No one had told her what had happened to her mother.
Rahila, her aunt, said the young girl had been eager to go to the hospital with her mother. “I told her, ‘Don’t go, wait here. Mommy will bring a baby for you,’ ” she recalled and then began to cry. “I don’t know how to tell her that her mommy is dead,” she said.
The burial was one of many across Kabul on Wednesday morning. Hospital officials said the mothers of 10 newborns were among dead, alongside two infants, pregnant women, nurses and a security guard. Sixteen were wounded.
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