Photo: Collected
When she first heard the gunshots, French tourist Anne-France Brill thought for a split second there was a celebration in the Afghan market where she and her fellow travellers stopped to buy fruit.
But then she heard one of her companions screaming: "I realised she had blood all over her stomach."
The 55-year-old had been sitting in a van during a group tour in the mountainous city of Bamiyan on Friday evening when a gunman approached their vehicles and opened fire.
Brill was unhurt, but the Lithuanian woman next to her was hit.
"She had gone completely white," Brill said. "She was saying, 'I'm cold, I'm cold... I'm going to die'."
The spray of gunfire only lasted seconds, Brill recalled, followed by long minutes of uncertainty crouching on the floor of the van, wondering what had happened, if it was over, what to do.
"There was blood everywhere," said Brill.
A Norwegian man in the van had also been wounded, and their driver had been killed.
He was one of six gunned down: three Spanish tourists, two Afghan men working with the group and a Taliban security official who returned fire on the gunman.
Suddenly, Taliban authorities swarmed the street, cordoning off and clearing the road.
As they approached the car where Brill and the others were, they still weren't sure if they were safe.
"But we didn't have a choice but to get out as we had wounded" in the van.
Messenger/Mumu
