‘This was home to Indians…we will be ready in a year’

Less than a week after the attack,new plans are already on the drawing board. The owners have decided to pull down the entire gutted structure and build a new guest house. The plan is ambitious but they are determined to ensure the place is up and running in a year.

“How can we shut down? This was the home of Indians in Kabul. We will get back with a new building within a year,” said manager Khalid Essa who survived the attack by jumping over the compound wall after the firing began. Essa and his staff survived but they lost seven guests,including four Indians who were here on official work.

The staff at the guest house — they take pride in the fact that this was “the first hotel in Afghanistan to provide internet connection” to guests — are wary of people taking photographs inside the compound. But the condition of the guest house gives a fair idea of what happened last Friday.

The car bomb shattered the gates at the entrance. Inside,broken glass,bullet shells and fragments of hand grenades litter the floor. Body parts of the bombers and blood stains are grisly reminders. Also lying there are the clothes and caps of two Afghan policemen who died in the attack.

Each room has been ransacked. From the bullet marks inside,there emerges a pattern — of firing that was indiscriminate,meant to kill the guests. Most rooms have been completely destroyed in the grenade blasts. Essa said the terrorists were tossing grenades inside every room they came across.

As the terrorists dragged the guests out of their rooms,an Italian and a French citizen tried to hide but they were shot dead,recalled Essa. The four Indians,engineer Bhola Ram,MEA official Nitin Chibber,ITBP constable Roshan Lal and tabla player Nawab Khan were killed in gunfire inside their rooms.

Others,including a yoga teacher who was here on cultural exchange and two women workers of an NGO,were lucky — the terrorists could not find them in their rooms. The yoga teacher,who hid in his room for over four hours while bullets were sprayed across it,is one of the key eyewitnesses to the attack.