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.