Nurse relives hospital bombing horror

The Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz after it was bombed. Picture: MSF / AP

The Doctors Without Borders hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz after it was bombed. Picture: MSF / AP

Published Oct 5, 2015

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Johannesburg - “At first there was confusion and dust settling… Over the past week we’d heard bombings and explosions before, but always further away. This one was different - close and loud.”

This is according to Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurse Lajos Zoltan Jecs, who was in Afghanistan’s MSF-run Kunduz trauma hospital when it was bombed in a suspected US airstrike on Saturday.

The airstrike killed 19 MSF staff and patients and left about 40 people seriously wounded.

“It was absolutely terrifying… I was sleeping in our safe room in the hospital. At about 2am I was woken by the sound of a big explosion nearby,” Jecs said on Sunday.

After about 20 minutes, Jecs heard someone calling his name. It was one of his fellow emergency room nurses. “He staggered in with massive trauma to his arm. He was covered in blood, with wounds all over his body.

“At that point my brain couldn’t understand what was happening. For a second I was just stood still, shocked.”

 

Jecs said his colleague had been calling for help but there was a limited supply of basic medical essentials in the safe room.

After about 30 minutes, the bombings had finally stopped and, together with the project co-ordinator, they went outside to see what had happened.

“What we saw was the hospital destroyed, burning. I don’t know what I felt… just shock again. I cannot describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was. In the intensive care unit, six patients were burning alive in their beds,” he said.

“We went to look for survivors. A few had made it to one of the safe rooms. One by one, people appeared, wounded, including some of our colleagues and caretakers of patients.”

They then went to the operating theatre. “A patient was lying there, on the operating table, dead, in the middle of the destruction.

“We couldn’t find our colleagues. Thankfully, we later found that they had run out from the operating theatre and had found a safe place.”

 

Jecs, who has been working for MSF at the trauma hospital since May, said he had never seen anything like this. “I have seen a lot of heavy medical situations. It is a different story when they are your work colleagues, your friends.

“It is much more than just a building… It is healthcare for Kunduz. Now it is gone. How can this happen? What is the benefit of this? Destroying a hospital and so many lives, for nothing… I cannot find words for this,” Jecs said.

 

MSF condemned the attack.

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