First Thought at The Times’s Kabul Bureau: We Are Under Attack
Then our team went out to the field to report — on the 90 people, most of them on their morning commute to work, whose lives were cut short so brutally; on the men
and women pacing the hospital halls and searching the morgues for news of their loved ones; and on the funeral processions across the city that have become so frequent these days.
In the days after the attack, every time I passed the security guards at the remaining entrances leading to our bureau — on their
phones, leaning against the wall in the shade — I thought back to those who were manning the entrance that was blown up.
By MUJIB MASHALJUNE 8, 2017
Usually when there is a bombing in Kabul, our first thought at The New York Times’s bureau is this: Can we get on
the roof, or on Twitter, to look for indications of where it happened so we can guide our reporting accordingly?
But on May 31, when a sewage truck full of military grade explosives was detonated at one of the entrances to the
city’s heavily guarded diplomatic enclaves, we didn’t have to look far: Most of our office windows were gone.
One senior civilian official, who keeps a loaded AK-47 near his desk, told me he stood in the
middle of his office with a cocked weapon thinking assailants would arrive any minute.
As the crowd was beginning to grow the next morning, an intelligence official I know and trust pulled me aside and whispered in my ear
that security forces had credible threats that suicide bombers might be targeting the protest.