KARACHI, March 4: It was a traumatic experience seeing so many people being brought either dead or injured to the hospital on Sunday, but equally painful was to console their relatives who were in a state of shock, said Dr Seemin Jamali, joint executive director and head of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre casualty department, while recalling the scenes at the hospital following the Sunday evening blasts in Abbas Town.

“You can try comfort someone whose relative is alive but it’s hard to console people who have lost their loved ones,” she added.

Following the bomb blasts that left 48 people dead and 140 others injured, the hospital received 33 bodies and 11 injured while other victims were rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Liaquat National Hospital and Aga Khan University Hospital.

The 33 people, including two women, brought dead to the JPMC aged between seven and 60 years.

Dr Jamali said that the victims came with multiple fractures and injuries.

Dr Sughra Parveeen, a general surgeon and head of JPMC ward-III, said: “It’s too difficult to express what we have been through over the past six months. Earlier, we used to get worried when we saw victims of violence. Now, it leaves us depressed.

“Almost every other day, emergency is declared at the hospital and as some in this city got a job to kill and injure, our job has been reduced to nothing but to keep on stitching wounds,” she said.

Unfortunately, calling medical professionals on holidays had become a matter of routine, she said.

“Penetration by a foreign body/explosive substance has been declared the cause of death in all the cases,” said Dr Jalil Qadir, additional police surgeon, JPMC, adding that wounds found on the 33 bodies were different, but they were all caused by explosive material.

Twelve people, including a child, were brought dead to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital on Sunday night, while two injured victims died during treatment, said MLO Dr Shiraz Ali Khawaja.

According to sources in the AKUH, over 100 injured were brought to the hospital. Of them six died.