Feature: Deadly attacks shatter Afghans' dreams of peace

"I have virtually lost my hope for embracing lasting peace in my country, and each security incident devours my dream of having peace, at least in the near future," a Jalalabad resident Hajji Alam Shah Khan told Xinhua.

"It was extremely horrific to see scores of people including children dead and injured laying on the ground and some crying for help," Khan said, adding, "My hope for having lasting peace in the country has been crushed by the dreadful bombing."

A deadly suicide bomb that rattled the relatively peaceful Jalalabad city in east Afghanistan on Saturday had left 35 people dead and injured more than 120 others, mostly civilians, according to local officials.

Khan, who escaped the deadly attack by chance, in talks with Xinhua murmured that he was out shopping and suddenly a powerful blast turned the daylight into dark and threw him meters away from the pathway.

"I saw several dead bodies and three of them were my neighbors, " Khan recalled while wiping out his tears, adding two of the victims were two brothers, Rauf Khan and Manawar Khan, who had their respective marriage ceremonies just four days before their death. The other relative was a 79-year-old man.

The bloody bombing reportedly happened when a good number of people including some security personnel had waited in a long queue behind the gate of a local bank to receive their salaries from the New Kabul Bank's branch in the eastern Jalalabad city.

"I was waiting in line for my turn to receive my monthly salary but suddenly a big blast hit the area and I found myself in hospital," an injured person under medical treatment told local media at a hospital on Sunday.

Another lucky man who said that fortune sided with him to escape the deadly bombing in Jalalabad city is a shopkeeper, Hamid, who like many Afghans goes by one name.

"Thank God, I am alive today although my shop is badly damaged, " Hamid told Xinhua.

However, the depressed Hamid recalled that the death of a nine year old child who used to sell water in front of his shop and lost his life in the blast would always plague him mentally.

"No one is safe in this country, neither the military nor civilians, even innocent children are not safe here," the terrified Hamid said.

The carnage in Jalalabad took place just 10 days after the massacring of more than two dozen security personnel. Some of them had been beheaded by the armed insurgents in the Jarm district of the northern Badakhshan province, which had shocked the whole Afghan nation.

Afghan leaders including President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani have blamed the enemies of Afghanistan for organizing the deadly attacks and condemned them in its strongest terms.

"Condemning terrorist attacks and expressing sympathy with the victims' families is not the remedy," a member of Mushrano Jirga or Upper House of Afghanistan's parliament, Anar Kuli Hunaryar, said on Sunday in a house session questioning security officials for the alleged failure to ensure security.

"We have lost our hope for the future because of the government 's failure to protect the lives of its citizens," a lawmaker Hajii Almas said recently, while lashing out at the government's alleged failure to control the ongoing militancy. Endi