After spending 38 days on the road, a number of Helmand Peace Convoy activists, who walked over 630kms to Kabul city, were on Monday treated by medics after arriving at Abdul Rahman Khan mosque in the capital.
Reporting from the scene, TOLOnews.com journalist Hayatullah Amanat said some of the activitists were in a bad shape when they arrived and were immediately treated by medics.
Amanat said many activists were severely dehydrated and had bleeding feet and legs. Some also had stomach problems after drinking contaminated water while on the road, medics said.
One doctor at the scene, Dr Khalil Solangi, said at least 30 of the activists needed treatment. He confirmed four had been taken to Wazir Akbar Khan for further treatment.
As medics quickly worked to treat the exhausted activists, their heart-wrenching stories about the war and its effect on them were being relayed.
One brave activist is 22-year-old Zahir Ahmad Zendani, from Helmand, who walked the whole way. Zendani is completely blind.
He told Amanat that he lost both his eyes in the war and also lost eight members of his immediate family to the conflict.
According to him, his father was killed in the war when he was just seven years old. Eight months later, while in Spin Boldak in Kandahar with his surviving family, he lost both eyes in an explosion.
Zendani’s guide was Inamulhaq Khetab. Friends from Helmand, they covered the entire distance together.
Initially eight activists left Laskhargar on May 12, in the hope of reaching Kabul. As they progressed, more and more people joined the convoy – with the youngest being 17 and the oldest 65.
The oldest was Adam Khan, a 65-year-old from Ghazni province. Speaking to Amanat after arriving in Kabul, he said he has lost three family members in the war.
The youngest meanwhile was Tahir Khan, a 17-year-old student from Kandahar. He started his first year of university this year but said he gave up his studies in favor of joining the march.
“I have lost four of my family members. We are tired of the war. When peace comes I will return to my studies. We don’t want women to be widowed anymore and we don’t want sons to carry on losing their fathers,” he said.
“Even the Taliban is tired of the war. This war has been imposed on us. I lost my fiance in the war and my aunt and her two children,” he added.
Two other exhausted activists who were treated on arrival in Kabul were Abdul Hadi, 42, and Bakht Mohammad, 50, both from Gilan district in Ghazni.
The two men have also been directly affected by the war and lost a brother and the other a son to the war.
Once rested, the activists will embark on their final leg of the journey to Eid Gah mosque Pul-e-Mahmoud Khan area in Kabul.