Sheffield man stunned by deaths in Afghanistan

By Jonathon Burch

KABUL (Reuters) - Abdul Wahid was asleep in England when he received a panicked phone call. "Buy a plane ticket and hurry to Kabul!" his brother's voice said.

It would take Wahid more than 24 hours to make the long trip from his home in Sheffield to the Afghan capital. Only there did he discover the shattering news.

Five members of his family had been killed in a devastating suicide blast outside the Indian Embassy.

A suicide car bomber rammed the gates of the mission in central Kabul on July 7, just as a diplomatic vehicle was entering the compound, killing 58 people and injuring 141.

Two Indian diplomats and two Indian guards were killed in the attack, but most of the casualties were Afghans queuing up to apply for visas.

The blast was so powerful it blew the embassy's metal gates back into the compound and destroyed the perimeter wall. It was the deadliest attack in the capital since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

"My brother wouldn't tell me what had happened, only that my daughter had been injured," Wahid says, sitting on the floor of his family home in western Kabul. His uncle picked him up from the airport and drove him straight to their home.

"When we got there, there was an ambulance and many cars parked outside our house," he says.

He then saw the bodies of his wife, his sister, his 10-year-old daughter and his sister's 2-year-old twins laid out on the dusty ground.

He buried them in a graveyard near the house later that evening.

Like many Afghans, Wahid left Kabul in search of a better life when the Taliban were still in power, moving to Britain nine years ago. Settling in Sheffield, he opened a pizza takeaway shop with two brothers and after some time moved his parents over.

Wahid was trying to get his wife and two kids to join him in Sheffield.

"I applied for a visa for my wife last September but it was rejected," he said, "so we were trying again this year."

The British Embassy in Kabul does not issue visas so Wahid's wife made an appointment with the British High Commission in New Delhi and was waiting in line to get an Indian visa.

"My brother told my sister and my wife to queue up early on Monday morning and he and my other brother would come to join them as early as possible, as they would be held up in traffic," Wahid explains.