Sobbing and weeping relatives of 12 Nepali nationals who were killed when a suicide bomber struck a minibus in Kabul received the bodies of their loved ones yesterday after they were flown from Afghanistan.
The victims were security guards working at the Canadian embassy in Kabul and came under attack on the way to work early on Monday. Two Indian nationals were also killed in the attack which left seven Nepalis wounded.
“This is the most difficult job for me to receive him dead,” said Sanjita Kumari, wife of Jitendra Thapa, who came to the airport in Kathmandu with her four-month-old son, to receive her husband’s body. “But there is no alternative and I must face it,” Kumari said, her baby pressed to the chest as tears streamed down her face.
Thapa, a former Indian army soldier, had served as a security guard in Iraq before going to war-torn Afghanistan in February this year with a promise to come back in November.
Relatives of the victims like Kumari heard of Monday’s attack in the media. She prayed for her husband until being told by the recruitment agency that he was dead.
“This came as a shock to me,” the 30-year-old said.
She said Thapa wanted their baby to serve in the British army that has been recruiting Gurkha soldiers from the foothills of
Nepal for 200 years.
Prime Minister K P Oli paid tributes to victims by placing marigold garlands on the wooden coffins which were then handed over to the relatives for funerals.
“The whole country is mourning the death of innocent Nepalis killed in this cowardly attack,” Oli told reporters after placing marigold garlands on each coffin.
The aircraft, chartered by the Nepal government, also brought back 24 other Nepalis who worked as guards for Sabre International, the same company that employed the victims.
“It could have been me,” said former Nepal army soldier Shyam Bahadur Tamang, 47, who began working in Afghanistan
in 2014.
“There is no security for us... there are many other Nepalis who are eager to quit and return home,” Tamang said.
Monday’s attack in Kabul was the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government and its Western backers, as Washington considers whether to delay plans to reduce the number of its troops in Afghanistan.
At least 8,000 Nepali nationals are working in Afghanistan, according to the labour department, but actual numbers could be higher as many cross over to India, which shares an open border with Nepal, and then travel on to Afghanistan.
Nepal allows its citizens to work in Afghanistan as security guards at the UN, foreign
embassies and their missions.
“The government will study the situation in which Nepalis were targeted after which we will decide whether to continue this,” Labour Minister Deepak
Bohara said.
Impoverished Nepal has long served as a supplier of security forces to the world.
A number of them are former soldiers with the Gurkha brigades of the Indian and British armies while others are retired Nepal army or police personnel.
Four Nepali guards were killed in a 2011 attack on a UN compound in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 2011.