Deafening blast, blood all over the class: Wounded students narrate ordeal

Srinagar, Feb 13: Fifteen-year-old Safora Farooq was sitting on a bench in her class of 37 students in a tuition centre in Narbal area of Pulwama when she suddenly heard a loud bang with a bright lightening which left her motionless.
“The sharp noise deafened my ears and my gaze blurred; I could see the lip movements of my classmates but did not hear what they were screaming,” narrated Safora lying on a bed here at SMHS hospital.
Safora did not know that her right leg was profusely bleeding. She had also suffered injury in her back.
“I tried to move out of my classroom but my legs were motionless. As soon as I placed hands to move my leg forward I found there was blood on my palm, my right leg was profusely bleeding,” she said.
Safora was among two dozen students who were injured after a mysterious blast rocked their tuition centre.
The classroom was filled with smoke and everyone was limping out of their class with most of them bleeding from their legs.
Safora was taken to the hospital in the private vehicle by the villagers where she saw other classmates were also injured. “I saw finger tips of one of my classmates cut off and blood was oozing from his hand.”
Eight of the injured class 10 students, two of them girls, with limb injuries were admitted in SMHS hospital’s emergency ward.
Lying still on the bed, Abrar Nazir says that it was around 2 in the afternoon when they were attending English class which happens to be last class of the day when the deafening sound created chaos in the class room.
“I was sitting in the second row and probably the blast occurred behind my bench and I was completely numb. There was no outsider in the classroom. We were 37 students there and it all occurred so swiftly that I could not understand what was happening around me,” Abrar said.
Abrar’s 10-year-old sister also studies in the same school but in the other class. “My younger sister was in the other class in the same school. Fortunately she is safe.”
“We rushed him to the Pampore hospital where the doctors gave first aid to him and referred to the SMHS hospital for further treatment,” said Firdous Ahmad, uncle of Abrar.
Another student lying adjacent to Abrar was Momin-ul-islam, who too suffered injuries in his legs and one of his arms.
“I saw blood sprinkled on the floor, books, clothes, school bags,” he said.
All the eight students, as per doctors treating them, have suffered injuries below the waist and are stable now.