DHAKA: Moments after a Houthi strike hit the Riyadh airport where he was transiting, Nasrullah Badar called his family in Dhaka but could not utter a word. A day later, his brother learned he did not survive the attack.
A 37-year-old teacher and imam, Badar was leading a group of 44 Bangladeshis on their Umrah pilgrimage. They left Dhaka on Saturday morning and were waiting two hours at King Khalid International Airport for another flight to Jeddah.
At that time, in the early afternoon, the Houthi missile hit the site.
“At the time of the attack, they were about to board the plane. The explosion occurred right beside him, as I heard from other pilgrims,” his elder brother, Mohammad Ahsan Ullah Badar, told Arab News.
“After the explosion, he called us twice. Although we received the call, we couldn’t hear his voice. Probably due to severe injury, he couldn’t utter a word. Later, we called back again, and again. But the calls went unanswered.”
In the evening, the number was no longer reachable.
“For an entire day, we found no trace of him. We searched in various hospitals, everywhere, but found nothing,” the brother said.
“One day later, on Sunday at 4 p.m., we received the tragic news through the Bangladeshi Embassy in Saudi Arabia.”
Badar was one of two Bangladeshis among 13 people killed in Saturday’s missile attack on the Saudi capital. More than 300 others were injured, including 24 from Bangladesh. They are 11 migrant workers and 13 Umrah pilgrims and remain hospitalized, according to Dhaka’s embassy in Riyadh.
Badar leaves behind two little sons and a daughter.
When he landed in Riyadh, he called his wife and parents.
“While talking with our father, he said he wished to perform Umrah on his behalf ... He also asked our mother to pray for him,” Badar’s brother said.
“My younger brother Nasrullah Badar was a very nice and kind-hearted person. Our whole village is crying and shocked by the tragic news of his untimely death.
“Since Sunday afternoon, people have been coming to our house to console us. All of them are saying only one sentence: Such a nice, kind, and pious person cannot be easily replaced.”