QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP)
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'We cannot put into words how we feel about the people who did this'
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"Please stop hurting us. Why are you doing this?"
In Bed No.5 in the bare and crumbling hospital, Sath was still caked in dried blood and mud. The bandages over his ruined leg are as dirty as his clothes.
Sath was playing with around 12 other children outside his house near the southwestern Afghan city of Kandahar on Thursday morning when a bomb landed close by, severing his right leg below the knee and throwing his sister Parmina high into the air.
"We were playing and then the planes came over and started dropping bombs," Sath said. His memory then blanks out.
Sitting next him on a seperate hospital bed sister Parmina, 7, has her hands swathed in bandages and a dazed look on her face. "We were crying when the bombs fell. People ran to get my father who brought us to Pakistan. I didn't see any of the other children, I only saw my brother," she said.
Their sobbing father Taj Mohd, who carried his children from their Rozgan district home near Kandahar to Quetta on Friday, said his son's life had been ruined before it had started. "We cannot put into words how we feel about the people who did this," he said.
"We are with the Taliban and against America. The whole world should be saying to America: 'Stop this war because our little children are being killed and injured.'"
Sath and Parmina's mother remains at their home looking after three other children. Another son was killed 15 years ago during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Sath, grimacing against the pain, said he didn't like Quetta and wanted to go back home, despite the unrelenting US attacks. "I want to go back to my home, to my friends. Afghanistan is my country," he said. Whether his friends are where he left them is unclear.
Neither Sath not Parmina could say what happened to the dozen or so other children who were playing with them when the bomb landed. "Many children were playing and were injured but I don't know where they went or what happened," said Taj. "We just don't know."
In a ward for women, eight-year-old Sadima Mohd is singing to herself, rocking backwards and forwards, clearly in shock.
She was trapped when her house was hit by a bomb in Kandahar last week. "It was in the daytime and I was with my mother in the house when a bomb fell and the house collapsed," she said.
Her grandfather Khair Mohd, who brought her to Quetta, said she was trapped under rubble which crushed her left leg.
With tears rolling down his cheeks, he told how their homes were destroyed. "When the planes come we don't see them, it's just when the bombs fall. It is terrible," he said. "On this day many walls of many houses fell. Many people were trapped and many people died and were injured. Most of them were children and young men."
He could not be more specific but added that nobody could understand why innocent people were being killed. "We are very worried because children and women are being hurt," he said.
"Please stop now. Stop the war. Why is America killing us, our children. We don't have any guns. We are poor. This is a poor, weak country. Why are you hurting us America?"
