While the world is still fight­ing the dan­ger­ous Caron­avirus,  we are con­fronted with the news that de­spite a cease­fire worked out be­tween the United States and the mil­i­tants of Afghanistan, the poor­est of the poor Sikhs left be­hind in Afghanistan were at­tacked by sui­cide bombers in a Gur­d­wara Sahib Gur­d­wara Guru Har Rai Sahib, Shor Bazaar in Kabul.

The en­counter be­tween the Afghan mil­i­tary and the ex­trem­ist el­e­ments who at­tacked the Gur­d­wara Sahib in Kabul has just ended af­ter nearly three hours. There were close to a 150 Sikhs in­side the Gur­d­wara Sahib at the time of the at­tack.

As per a con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mate, only about 300 to 400 Sikhs were left in Afghanistan. They were those who are ex­tremely poor or those who did not want to desert their beloved his­toric Gur­d­waras.

“I think many are dead. I have called on many num­bers of rel­a­tives in the Gur­d­wara and no one is re­spond­ing.” These are the words of a young Sikh stand­ing out­side the Gur­d­wara on the tele­phone to a WSN re­porter in In­dia.

“I left my room at around 8 am, near the stair­case I found a per­son with Kalash­nikov and I called him out. While he started fir­ing, I bolted the door and the gun­man tried to en­ter by break­ing the glass and open­ing fire. So, I ran to­wards the roof. On the way, I saw a few dead bod­ies in­clud­ing that of one Granthi and his son. From an­other roof, an Afghan army sol­dier told him to re­main in­side and as­sured me that we will be res­cued,” says a Sikh res­i­dent, per­haps liv­ing in one of the rooms of the Gur­d­wara Sahib.

“I am see­ing am­bu­lances tak­ing the in­jured to the hos­pi­tal. I have seen the dead be­ing taken to the hos­pi­tal. The at­tack on the Gur­d­wara has just been con­tained by the Afghan mil­i­tary but I can­not tell you the num­ber of ca­su­al­ties. All I can say is the num­ber is quite high,” said Narinder Singh, Mem­ber Par­lia­ment of the Afghanistan Par­lia­ment and son of the for­mer Mem­ber Par­lia­ment who was killed ear­lier.

#Break­ing #Sikhs #Kabul #Afghanistan #At­tack­onGur­d­wara pic.twit­ter.com/​MMYX4p­kR8O

— The World Sikh News (@World­SikhNews1) March 25, 2020

This is a de­vel­op­ing story….We are at­tempt­ing to get more de­tails from the Sikhs in Kabul. Watch this space reg­u­larly for up­dates.