Pakistani family reunion shattered after dad killed in Houthi attack on UAE

Mamoor Khan’s relations had been eagerly awaiting his homecoming to the northern Pakistan city of Mir Ali. However days earlier than the deliberate reunion, his physique arrived from the UAE, leaving relations numbed by shock and grief.

Khan and two Indian nationals have been killed when drone and missile strikes launched by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen hit gas vans close to storage amenities of state oil large ADNOC in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 17. Khan had been working as a driver for an ADNOC contractor.

“We have been making ready for his homecoming,” Khan’s youthful brother, Manzoor Ahmad, advised Arab Information. “However we obtained his useless physique as an alternative.”

Khan, 49, is survived by his mother and father, spouse, and eight kids, who have been wanting ahead to his return for a trip on the finish of this month.

His second brother, Javed Khan, additionally a driver within the UAE, was the primary to find out about his dying. An ADNOC worker had known as him to say he had suffered accidents within the assault and was in hospital in Abu Dhabi.

“I nonetheless didn’t know what had occurred, however the website the place my brother was working was on hearth,” he stated. “I requested the caller to inform me clearly if my brother had died. The caller replied in a choked voice, ‘sure,’ and that his useless physique was within the hospital.”

Khan was the primary assist of his household in North Waziristan, an impoverished tribal district on the Pakistan-Afghan border, the place years of militancy and safety operations have thwarted social and financial growth.

Per week after Khan’s funeral, his father, who despatched him to the UAE greater than 20 years in the past to discover a higher life, advised Arab Information he was nonetheless struggling to speak concerning the lack of his son.

“I felt like I used to be stepping over raging hearth once I obtained the information about my son’s dying,” he stated.

Khan’s mom has been on tranquilizers since receiving the tragic information.

“At house, now we have suffered loads as a consequence of militancy, and when Mamoor left for the UAE, we have been positive that he would get pleasure from a secure life there,” his neighbor and pal Munawar Shah Dawar stated. “His dying has left us devastated, as he fell prey to a terrorist assault there too.”

Yasir Ahmad, Khan’s eldest son, stated he and his father had many plans for the household’s future and would typically focus on them over the telephone. A kind of plans, to arrange a small enterprise, was to have been put into motion throughout Khan’s house go to this month. The thought was that the enterprise would have later allowed him to return to Mir Ali for good.

One in all Khan’s priorities had been to make sure his youthful kids obtained an training, one thing he had requested Ahmad to supervise.

“My father needed my youthful brother to change into a health care provider, in order that he might come again and spend the remainder of his life with us.

“We’ve nothing left now, and even the training of my brothers will undergo as a result of I’m a each day wage laborer, incomes 600 rupees ($3.40) a day, which isn’t sufficient.”

Khan’s physique was repatriated to Pakistan and buried on Jan. 20.

Mustafa Haider, director common of the welfare division on the Abroad Pakistanis Basis, advised Arab Information that dying advantages can be paid to the household and the inspiration was additionally contemplating monetary assist from its personal funds.