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Posted by Lianne Gutcher at 12:04 on 26 Feb 2010

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An explosion that was clearly none-too-far from the house yanked me from sleep at 6.30 this morning. I swear to God, I jumped about a metre horizontally off my bed. The bomb was followed by gunfire outside the house.

After ascertaining a) the windows were all still intact (neighbouring friends weren't so lucky); b) where the action was (at the mall that featured in the last blog); and c) that we weren't going to be overrun, we put the kettle on and had a cup of tea.

A second explosion followed, not as loud. There was gunfire that sounded serious and targeted, and other more sporadic gunfire that sounded like members of the Afghan security forces firing randomly in excitement or fear as is often their wont.

I poked my head round the compound gate to see Afghan National Security Forces sealing off the top of my road.

Inspired by a marine in a New York Times story this week, I was going to yell : "What you shooting at, Hoss?" but thought better of it.

A little later when things had calmed down, my flatmate knocked on the door of my room.

"Now, don't be alarmed if you go outside and see blood running down the street. There's quite a lot of it but it's OK. I thought at first perhaps medics had been using our side street to tend the wounded. Or there had been hand-to-hand combat in the lane we somehow missed. But it's only the neighbours - they've apparently just slaughtered a cow."

A grisly day all round.

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