The phone rang, worrisome Hanbar Isa finally had news about her 26-year-old son Parhati Aiisa Tuesday morning.
The call came from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region People's Hospital, one day and a half after the deadly riot that left at least 156 dead and 1,080 others injured in Urumqi, the region's capital in northwest China.
Doctors at the hospital told Isa, a Uygur ethnic, that her son was hospitalized.
When Isa and her daughter showed up at the entrance of the intensive care unit wards at the hospital, Isa lost control and burst into tears after seeing her son's trousers left at the gate.
"They are my son's trousers! They are my son's trousers!" Isa wept, pointing to a pair of gray trousers, tainted by large blood scars.
Parhati Aiisa suffered serious knife injury at his head when trying to keep order as rioters smashed windows of a Carrefour supermarket in Urumqi Sunday evening.
"Why did they do this to my son? Why did they injure my son?" asked the weeping Isa, comforted by two security guards at the hospital, where Aiisa underwent a major surgery to remove his right eye.
Aiisa, among with 37 others, were treated at the ICU wards at the 13th floor crowded by patients with serious bruises, in-bleeding or fractures and other injuries during the deadly riot.
Lying on bed No. 14 at the ICU ward with Aiisa, Zhang Bo was totally unable to move his legs though he was still conscious, a symptom doctors attributed to a broken spine.
Zhang constantly woke up from nightmares at night and could hardly get rid of the trauma brought by his horrible experience on Sunday evening.
"I was off duty at around 9 p.m. Sunday and took No. 908 bus at Dawan to get home," recalled Zhang, a 31-year-old bus driver with a bruised face. "Our bus was surrounded by numerous mobs wielding iron rods near the crossing of Yan'an Road."
"The duty driver was pulled out of the bus and beaten harshly by the rioters," Zhang said. "About a dozen passengers and I were forced to get off the bus as the mobs began smashing bus windows."
"I was hit on my head and my back by several mobs, I passed out and woke up to find myself at the hospital late at night," he said. "They were so cruel and you can't call them human."
"I am still not married and I see no future with my broken spine," Zhang's voice turned low.
Khlim Abdurehim, vice president of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region People's Hospital, told Xinhua that more than 1,000 members of the hospital's medical staff had treated 307 people injured in the riot, most of them suffered heads or chest injuries, fracture and burns.
"It is the first time for our hospital to take in so many injured patients at a time," Abdurehim said. "All the beds of the surgery unit had been occupied and extra beds of the high-tension blood and infection units were mobilized."
Forty-one-year-old Xu Yunsheng was also one of the victims attacked by mobs during the riot.
"The mobs smashed the windows of my bus and chased passengers, beat us with their fists, or kicked us hard, some even beat us with iron and wooden rods," recalled Xu, a migrant worker from central China's Henan Province.
"Whenever I close my eyes, the brutal scenes come up to my mind," Xu said. "My nose was beaten to fracture and I managed to stand up and ran about 500 meters to get rid of the mobs, with blood all over my face. It was too scary!"
(Xinhua News Agency July 8, 2009)
