'It was a spinechilling scene'

Darshan Lal, a teacher in Kargil's Suru public school, had no idea he was detaining his pupils for a tragedy on Tuesday afternoon.

"Let us finish the lessons first," he told his panicky students, trying to sound calm and confident.

It was early afternoon and, minutes ago, the first of the shells to find Kargil's heart had burst on a building nearby. The children were agitated, and Lal wanted to avoid a panic rush on to the roads.

The 40-year-old maths teacher went on with his lessons, not knowing that a few minutes later the school building would take a hit.

"The next thing I know," he recalls as he lay in Srinagar's SMHS hospital, where he had been chopper-lifted Wednesday morning, "was a tremendous explosion rocking the building. I felt a sharp pain in my chest and found myself lying in a pool of blood."

All around, the teacher heard cries. He raised his head and could see his students on the floor, some conscious, some not. The room was boxed in. And shells were exploding all round the building.

"Some teachers jumped inside somehow and lifted me and the children,'’ he recounts, "We were taken to the T B hospital on the outskirts of the town."

The journey was time-consuming and full of risks. On the way, he could hear people crying for help. Many were lying all over the market place.

"We saw a shell hitting a house. It was a spinechilling scene," Lal shudders, "We had to stop... and then another one hit the house. We couldn't do anything -- only pray."

Lal was one of the lucky ones -- he was spared the pain of lying injured on the road for hours beneath debris, not knowing whether help would ever come. Ghulam Hussain, a shopkeeper in Kargil, was one of such unlucky ones.

"I knew Lal Chowk, the area our shop was situated, had been badly hit," says Mohammed, Hussain's sibling, "But we could not move out of the house -- shells were bursting uninterrupted all over the place."

When finally Mohammed did manage to reach the site, he found the shop in a shambles. His brother was unconscious, outside on the road. Then followed the struggle to reach Hussain to the town hospital, from where he had to be moved to Srinagar. Hussain is still to regain consciousness.

Tsering Wangial's memory of Tuesday's Kargil is a maze of confusion. There was chaos all round. Everyone was fleeing in whatever modes of transport they could find.

"Buses were all jampacked. And trucks, cars and jeeps were leaving with panic-stricken people towards the Sanka Wakha and Mulbekh villages," he recalls, "I am 45 and have lived through some real bad attacks. But I have never seen such destruction in my life."

The town, he says, has been deserted: "This morning, as I accompanied my injured sister to the helipad, I saw only three policemen on the streets -- no one else."

Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah's exhortion to the residents to return to the town hasn't brought much cheer or confidence among the victims.

"No one wants to go back to Kargil," Wangial responds, "We have had a bitter experience. In April, too, shelling had killed three civilians. What security is there for our lives?"