Pakistanis woke up to heart-wrenching news of a national tragedy on Wednesday as a fire gutted parts of the gynaecology ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) in Islamabad.
Visuals of rescue personnel entering the building through broken windows and aggrieved parents crying for children they hadn’t even gotten the chance to name flooded TV screens as an air of intense grief descended over the country.
Celebrities joined the nation in its mourning, with Zhalay Sarhadi sharing a post about a father who had been blessed with a son, only to lose the child in the inferno.
Sarhadi said she had no words to offer except her prayers for the parents who were faced with an unimaginable loss.
Areeba Habib shared a poetic message to the children’s mothers who spent their pregnancies looking out for their unborn kids, only to lose them in a fire. “Some fires begin with a spark. Others begin when someone fails to care,” she wrote.
