DES MOINES, Iowa — A scene of desperation turned into a scene of horror after two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans at Kabul's airport Thursday.
For Nabi Mohammadi, all he could think about was his family who had been at the Hamid Karzai International Airport just moments before the attacks.
"I called my dad, he said they just made it back from the airport and he didn't know... he just heard the explosion but didn't know where the explosion happened," Mohammadi told Local 5 Thursday afternoon. "I told him it was at the gates, at Abbey Gate where they stayed for about 10 hours today, so they were basically an hour away from that explosion. I could have lost my whole family today."
Mohammadi moved to the U.S. in 2013 with help from the Iowa National Guard. He worked with the U.S. Army for five years as a translator before he came to Iowa.
The images of the ongoing situation in his home country are burned into Mohammadi's mind.
"I was there just about three weeks ago and the sense the place where the explosion happened... I drove by that place like three weeks ago and hey, it's just sad," Mohammadi said. "Like the river, and I just saw a picture today, the river was looking completely red from people's blood, you know, it was just a river of blood and those senses... I will probably, not going to be able to get them off of my mind for my entire life."
As many as 1,000 Americans and many more Afghans are still struggling to get out of Kabul. As of Thursday evening, the Associated Press reports 60 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops have died from the attack.
Mohammadi told Local 5 he's been trying to reach elected officials in Iowa as well as President Joe Biden to get his family out of Afghanistan. He also reached out to people in the Air Force to bring his family to the states.
"I sent all the information, their contact information, their photos, their IDs, and everything they needed, they said are going to contact my family, too. And provide them with the code so they can write it down on a board so they can see them," Mohammadi said. "But they did not call them because I think they knew that something is going to happen in that gate."
Mohammadi said he hopes someone at the airport or in the U.S. government will call on his family to get them out of Afghanistan.
He called on the president to do more for those who've helped the U.S., not only as translators but those who did anything for the country.
"We want, you know, now that we need help, they need to help us and I want him to extend the evacuation. We will not be able to get everyone within the next 32 hours. It's not going to happen," Mohammadi said. "We are going to leave a lot of U.S. citizens, green card holders, SIV applicants and their families behind."