interpretation

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had every heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born. Huddled together in the dining room and waiting for the sun to rise, none of us had any notion that a way of life had ended.

Q) What does underlined part mean? Isn't it a participial phrase? I don't understand the words in bold in particular.
Is it like "Since none of us were huddled together in the dining room and were waiting for the sun to rise, ....?"