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Terrorists Seeking Allah's Favour in Slaughtering Women and Babies

Babies who survived the attack receive medical care. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

"I brought my daughter-in-law to Kabul so that she would not lose her baby. Today we'll take his dead body [home] to Bamiyan."
"We gave  him the name Omid. Hope for a better future, hope for a better Afghanistan and hope for a mother who has been struggling to have a child for years."
"When I opened my eyes [after fainting], I saw that my grandson's body had fallen to the ground, covered in blood."
Zahra Muhammadi, Kabul, Afghanistan

"The gunmen blew up a water tank and then started shooting women. I saw a pool of water and blood from the small gap of a safe room where some of us managed to lock ourselves."
"I saw patients being killed even as they begged and pleaded for their life in the holy month of
Ramadan."
"It is very hard for me to work now."
Nurse with Medecines sans Frontieres

"Whilst fighting was ongoing, one woman gave birth to her baby and both are doing well."
"More than ever, MSF stands in solidarity with the Afghan people."
Medecines sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)

Tuesday morning in the capital city of Afghanistan, Islamist errorists dressed as police officers stormed into a small hospital, Dasht-e-Barchi, located in the southwestern corner of Kabul. They tossed grenades and began shooting indiscriminately, deliberately targeting women and babies at the government-run hospital with a maternity clinic operated by the international medical charity, Medicines sans Frontieres.

The massacre left 24 people dead, 15 of them women, along with two newborn babies. Six babies are now without mothers. "In my more than 20-year career I have not witnessed such a horrific, brutal act", stated the director of Ataturk Children's Hospital in Kabul, Dr. Hassan Kamel. The raid occurred in the very day that 32 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a funeral in Nangarhar, an eastern province of the country.

The Taliban, the extremist Islamist group formerly in control of the country, when it played host to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, before being ousted by the U.S.-led international coalition in 2001, responding to the 9/11 attacks, has denied any involvement in either atrocity. An offshoot of Islamic State, operating out of Afghanistan admitted to the Nangarhar attack, but made no mention of the carnage at the maternity clinic.

Zahra Muhammadi, who was present at the maternity clinic for the birth of her grandson, spoke of witnessing one of the terrorists firing at pregnant women and new mothers, while they tried to hide under hospital beds. Then she saw the assailants turn toward the cradles, and hearing the sound of gunfire she fainted, only to discover when she awoke that her grandchild had perished in the assault. 

"Who attacks newborn babies and new mothers? Who does this? The most innocent of innocents, a baby! Why?" stated Deborah Lyons, head of the UN mission in Afghanistan.

Afghan mothers have volunteered to breastfeed babies who have lost their mothers. The children lost their mothers after gunmen attacked a maternity hospital in Kabul

Kabul has been struggling under the onslaught of the same dread SARS-CoV-2 virus that has laid siege to the rest of the world, with a high rate of infection amongst its health-care workers. Dozens of infants and adults wounded in the attack have been taken in by other hospitals in the capital to treat their wounds, to the relief of officials at MSF.