First responders: Hospital guard, cook race into fireball as blast levels Srinagar police station

SRINAGAR: A thunderclap of fire, concrete, and smoke tore through Nowgam police station in Srinagar’s upscale Sheikhpora neighbourhood close to 11.30pm on Nov 14. While sirens lagged behind, a hospital guard and a cook were already on the move. Ulfat Dar, a young guard at Ujala Cygnus Hospital nearly a km away, saw the orange flare crest the skyline after the explosion. He thought it was a cylinder blast. He still ran. “Drive,” he told Waseem, a hospital cook. They swung an ambulance towards the station. “They were among the first to reach,” Ujala Cygnus manager Dr Parvez Sofi said Tuesday. In their first dash they hauled eight wounded policemen out of debris and flame. More followed in two additional runs. On the last, they pried free a trapped officer whose legs were pinned under a