Even as reports and images of devastation following Thursday's twin suicide blasts at Kabul airport flooded news and social media timelines, a tweet about how about 160 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus escaped the blast has been going viral. It appears that the group was at the Kabul airport the day before the blast and had been standing in the exact spot where the blasts occurred.
Taking to Twitter, Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee President Manjinder Singh Sirsa wrote, "I just had a phone call conversation with S Gurnam Singh, president of Kabul Gurdwara committee who apprised me that today’s #Kabulairport explosion has happened at the exact same place where they were standing yesterday We thank Almighty that such thing didn’t happen yesterday".
He added in a later tweet that "all the minorities who have taken refuge in Gurdwara Karte Parwan are safe".
The tweets came following twin blasts in Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport which left at least 60 civilians and 13 US soldiers dead and several others injured.
One of the bombers struck people standing knee-deep in a wastewater canal under the sweltering sun, throwing bodies into the fetid water. Those who moments earlier had hoped to get on flights out could be seen carrying the wounded to ambulances in a daze, their own clothes darkened with blood.
A U.S. official said the complex attack was believed to have been carried out by the Islamic State group. The IS affiliate in Afghanistan is far more radical than the Taliban, who recently took control of the country in a lightning blitz and condemned the attack.
(With inputs from agencies)
