"Three brothers share this room in Nangahar Regional Hospital in eastern Afghanistan. Between ...

"Three brothers share this room in Nangahar Regional Hospital in eastern Afghanistan. Between them they have one leg. Upstairs, in the female ward, their younger sister, Rabia, was recovering after one of her legs, too, had been amputated. At their extended family’s home, 40 minutes from Jalalabad City, between the invisible frontlines in Sorkh Rod District from which Afghan government and Taliban forces mount attacks against one another once or twice a month, three of their cousins lay on charpoys—day-beds—in the shade of an awning that looked on to a large vegetable garden surrounded by high, mud walls. Each had had one of their legs amputated, too. Four other members of the family were buried in graves nearby. Nearly a month ago, after Taliban fighters had attacked from Black Mountain, a treeless range controlled by the Taliban that overlooks Surkh Rod and the family’s home, the children found an unexploded rocket propelled grenade laying in an adjacent field. It was metallic and sleek. A child in America or Australia or Europe might have thought it resembled the foam ‘Nerf’ footballs that have tail-fins and whistle as they sail through the air between thrower and catcher. They carried it home and dropped it outside, at the foot of the mud wall. Soon after, the grenade exploded. It’s shrapnel fragments shot out at ballistic speed, parallel to the ground like the petals of a daisy, cutting most of the children down at the knees. This morning, in Jalalabad, six-year-old Mangal (left) was having his wounds cleaned and dressings changed. His father, Amir Shah Gul, held his remaining leg up so a six by three inch open wound that looked like lean, raw steak and barely covered the bone, wouldn’t touch the bed. Next to him, his brother, eight-year-old Abdul Rashid (centre), who’d lost both legs, played with a wind-up toy tank. He was stoic except when he heard the stifled cries of his elder brother, 12-year-old Shafiquallah (right), who was comforted by his uncle Zar Gul, as a nurse pulled plastic straws—fluid-drains—from between the sutures in his two stumps."