KARACHI: Two burqa-clad women pleaded at the gates of the Civil Hospital Karachi emergency to let them inside to see their brothers wounded in a burglary.

A man wanted to bring in his sick little boy but was told to take him somewhere else or head towards another gate. The stick-wielding young men outside the big gate of the entrance yelled at everyone to step back in order to clear the way for the Burnes Road blast injured.

Meanwhile, the men injured in the blast were receiving emergency treatment inside. Haroon Anwar, 30, lay on a gurney, his mobile phone on the chest and other workers from his sector office by his side. “I was inside handling paperwork. There was so much to be done but I am here now,” he said looking at his colleagues, helplessly.

The young man, with a large bump on the right side of his head, said that he did not really remember what happened following the loud explosion, and kept mumbling that he had work to do with elections so close while his colleagues urged him not to think about that now.

Twenty-five-year old Altaf Hasan could not speak. He had a broken jaw with his tongue bandaged. He was still bleeding from the mouth. Yousuf, a family friend accompanying him, said that he was on his motorcycle heading towards the MQM sector office when the blast occurred and he flew off the bike to land on his face.

The young man was gesturing to the workers near him to get him out of the emergency room. The family friend promised to take him away from there.

“Look at him. He is hyperventilating. He feels claustrophobic. Even I feel like the walls are closing in on us here,” the family friend told the sector workers who agreed with him but also wanted the doctors to clear him for release. “I will take him to our family doctor,” the friend told them.

Next to him lay 30-year-old Shoaib Shabbir Ahmed nursing an injured back. “I was going into the sector office when there was this big explosion and I was suddenly pushed against a wall which fell on me,” he whispered. “The moment I heard the blast, I knew it was a bomb attack on the office, the way things are these days,” he added.

“There was smoke everywhere. I couldn’t find my way out. Then someone helped me up and put me in an ambulance,” informed 45-year-old Arif Abdullah.

None of the injured had any family members around. They said their colleagues had informed their families that they were all alive. “God saved our lives today,” said Abdullah as his fellow workers urged him to lay back and rest.