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The attack on a delivery room in Afghanistan, where women and babies were killed, shakes a country devastated by the conflict.
Zainab, 27, gave birth to a boy in a hospital in the southwestern part of Kabul on Tuesday morning.
It was named Omid, which means “hope” for dari.
After trying to get pregnant for several years, she was glad she gave birth to a young child.
An hour before she and her family were about to return home, three gunmen disguised themselves when police entered the hospital and began shooting.
When Zainab was in the bathroom when it happened, and passed out from what she saw, Reuters writes.
Murdered women and children
Twenty-four people died in the terror attack in the Afghan capital earlier this week. Among them were 16 women and two newborns. Six babies lost their mothers in the attack.
“During my more than 20-year career, I have never witnessed such an atrocious and brutal act,” says Dr. Hassan Kamel, director of Atatürk Children’s Hospital in Kabul, where many of the babies who survived the attack were received.
KILLED MOTHERS: A nurse is investigating newborns who lost their mothers during an attack on a hospital in Kabul.
Photo: Omar Sobhani / Reuters
One of the women in the maternity ward gave birth while the attack was taking place, MSF writes in a press release on Wednesday.
Both the mother and the child survived.
The organization, which supports the maternity ward at the hospital, says that one of the midwives died in the attack.
On the same day, 33 people died in a suicide attack at a funeral in Nangarhar province. An IS-affiliated group blamed the attack, according to Site Intel Group, which monitors the terrorist group’s activities online.
Does IS mean behind?
No one has yet claimed the massacre at the hospital. The Taliban have denied blame for both attacks.
But the US special envoy for the Afghan meeting, Zalmay Khalilzad, reports on Twitter that authorities believe he IS guilty of both attacks.
“IS has shown a pattern in which they prefer such outrageous attacks on civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and the world,” writes Khalilzad.
We have four hours together
“I brought my daughter-in-law to Kabul so that she doesn’t lose the baby,” Zahra Muhammadi, Zainab’s mother-in-law, told Reuters.
– Today we must bring his body home.
Zainab had been trying to have children for seven years and was waiting nine months to meet her son.
They were four hours together before he was killed.
“We call him Omid, hoping for a better future, a better Afghanistan and a mother who has been struggling for years to have a child,” says Muhammadi by phone.
MURDERED CIVIL: An Afghan woman is crying as she searches for a relative after a terror attack at a hospital in Kabul.
Photo: Omar Sobhani / Reuters
It affects the peace process.
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani condemned both attacks on Tuesday and ordered the Afghan army to switch to an offensive defense strategy as US forces withdraw from the country.
– This is cruelty on a whole new level. Here you go to a maternity ward, take the lives of women giving birth and newborns, says Afghanistan expert Kristian Berg Harpviken, researcher at the Peace Research Institute, PRIO to NRK.
– No one could have imagined that such a thing could happen.
He says the attack could affect the US-led peace process in Afghanistan.
– One is the shock effect that makes many people think that there is little chance of peace. People who do this cannot speak. The second is that those who are initially skeptical of peace now have good arguments, says Harpviken.
The researcher believes that the Afghan government’s decision to go into an offensive defense mode is not necessarily dramatic, but it gives a signal that there is less optimism for a peace process.
– Ghani is also under pressure from his own skeptics, says Harpviken.
Increased violence
On Thursday, at least five people were killed and 20 wounded in a bomb attack in the southeastern province of Paktia, Afghanistan. The Taliban have blamed the attack.
– We are now in a situation where there have been many extensive attacks. There has been an escalation in violence from both the Taliban and the Islamic State lately, says Harpviken.
“It is not a good sign for a peace process,” he says.
IS complicates the process
At the same time, Harpviken notes that the presence of the IS terrorist group in Afghanistan further complicates the situation.
– Although IS does not have strong support among the people of Afghanistan, or is particularly strong, its presence fundamentally changes the conflict, says Harpviken.
– That makes the Taliban more cautious about committing.
