PESHAWAR, Sept 29: “We were happy then we heard a big bang. All I could remember after that was flames and dead,” says Sunbal, who still has red bangles on her wrists and eyeshade on her eyes.

Sunbal, a teenage girl from Matta Mughalkhel in Charsadda district, sustained injuries in Qissa Khwani Sunday’s blast. She is one of the three females, who have sustained injuries in the blast. All her other relatives, more than 12, are either dead or missing.

She like her aunts and cousins, sitting with her in the Suzuki van, was in festive mood when they started off for Peshawar. The van loaded with women, children and four male members of the family was hit as it was passing through Qissa Khwani Bazaar.

The powerful blast completely destroyed the vehicle and killed many of its passengers mostly women and children. Total 43 people were killed and 101 suffered injuries, many of them in critical condition, in the explosion, according to spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital (LRH).

“I never thought we would be hit by a bomb attack,” says Sunbal innocently while lying on a stretcher with head and foot injuries in surgical ward of LRH.

Right next to her Haleema, her niece, is lying on a bed with head and foot injuries. Haleema says that she can still remember how everyone in Suzuki was happy when they were coming to Peshawar to see their relatives and invite them to a wedding ceremony as it was not less than a picnic for girls, hailing from a far flung village in Matta Mughalkhel.

“The blast changed everything. I saw dead people on flames and then I dropped unconscious,” she says remembering the horrific incident.

The two girls seem calm, but their aunt Sakina, a 40-year-old widow, is restless and crying. Having head and leg injuries, Sakina is not crying out of pain of her wounds but because of her desperation as she has not seen her only daughter and her two grandchildren after the fateful incident.

She is crying loudly as she is worried for the safety of her only daughter, her two grandchildren, her sisters, her brothers-in-law and other relatives, who were with her in the vehicle.

“I am a widow and I didn’t get married because of my daughter. Now where is she? Please tell me,” she pleads with her teary-eyed brother, who sits mum next to her bed.

She keeps calling those, who bomb innocent people, mercenaries of death. She curses them praying to God to send such people to hell.

”I have only one daughter and she too got lost in the attack. I don’t deserve this,” Sakina cries. Her relative Mir Azam, working in Peshawar, who has also lost his daughter in the bomb blast, says that there is no news of any of their relatives present in the vehicle.

Either they are dead or missing, he says looking around helplessly. He wonders why the government doesn’t arrest the culprits, who attacked a church, a bus carrying government servants and now the innocent people in Qissa Khwani.

“Police can detect a few grams of hashish in the pocket of a suspected person. How they missed this vehicle carrying explosive material,” questions elderly Mir Azam.

The extended family seems confused and helpless, not knowing their sin and the colossal punishment that destroyed it. The confusion, helplessness and repressed pain is what written on their faces.