Medical staff hunkered down in the hospital wards posted desperate messages for help on social media. Television footage showed some of them trapped on the ledge of a top-floor window.“Attackers are inside the hospital. Pray for us,” a hospital staff member wrote on Facebook.

Hospital administrators told AFP that three gunmen, wearing white coats, were on the loose after a suicide bomber on foot blew himself up at the backdoor entrance, sparking chaos inside the 400-bed facility.

“I saw one of the attackers, armed with an AK-47 and dressed as doctor, shooting at patients and guards on the third floor,” hospital nurse Abdul Qadeer told AFP.

“They shot my friend but I managed to flee... I had to jump over the barbed wire to escape.”