Afghanistan's first amusement park

Published November 21, 2014
Visitors enjoy a bumper car ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a bumper car ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Sadaf, 6, gets his face painted at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Sadaf, 6, gets his face painted at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a spinning chair ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a spinning chair ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a spinning chair ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a spinning chair ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a flying spinning saucer ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Visitors enjoy a flying spinning saucer ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Children enjoy a spinning teacup ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP
Children enjoy a spinning teacup ride at Afghanistan's first amusement park called City Park in Kabul. — AP

Excitement builds in the queue forming behind the barbed-wire security fence outside the park as children in bright clothes clutch their parents' hands and hop from foot to foot in anticipation of the pleasures waiting behind the high concrete blast walls.

For the thousands of families who have visited there since it opened during a national religious holiday weekend in October, it is a rare escape from lives blighted by war, death and misery.

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