Baghdad Journal

Bad day

Helicopters are flying close tonight. I can hear the whump whump of the propellers concuss on the windows as they pass by. They are buzzing our building every five minutes; probably because some hours ago, in broad daylight, resistance fighters blew up a humvee right outside the Rabiya, our hotel. Thankfully we were attending a press conference at the Iraqi Forum and listening to General Sanchez, commander of forces here in Iraq, talk about the attack on the Jordanian Embassy earlier, which killed 12 people and injured scores. Coming back from the conference, we find several blocks of Karada Kharij closed off, guarded by tanks and armored cars while choppers circle overhead. Clouds of smoke are coming from somewhere up the street, but we aren't sure exactly from where. What the hell is going on? Is it our building that's on fire? We wonder. I have that sinking feeling in my stomach -- more like plummeting, really -- and for once it's not the food we've eaten: We have read tons about the attacks on U.S. troops of course and we drive by the places they have occurred daily. But now they have fallen on our doorstep.

A soldier at the blockade tells Adam the road wouldn't be clear for a couple hours but he won't tell him what happened. Feeling helpless, we move on. At the Hamra Hotel some two miles away, we try to call our hotel, but it's busy. Adam visits the AP guys in their hotel room office. They are "in the thick of it," he says. What they hear is a humvee was completely destroyed in the attack, with two soldiers dead and another without a kneecap. We have a beer at the Hamra cafe with another journalist who was just at the other scene -- the Jordanian Embassy bombing -- which is across town from our hotel. He said he saw smoking car parts 300 yards away from the blast site. That's how he could tell it was a car bomb. In addition to car parts and debris, he said he also stepped over a small girl's severed head on his way to the grisly scene at the embassy.
We call our hotel and upon receiving word that the road is open, we drive back. Our driver/translator Abu Abdullah was right in saying over and over to us that no place is safe in Iraq, but even he didn't know how right he was. Karada is a place where many troops came and shopped. They had been relaxing their guard a bit as they did so, interacting with the shop owners and exchanging jokes with the Iraqi kids who would gather in droves to talk to them. As we pull in front of Rabiya, we see the twisted, upturned concrete on the median where the humvee had been. Some windows of the hotel lobby have been broken, most likely by the impact of the blast. In the lobby, we talk to an eyewitness. His name is Mohammed, a driver for the military contractors who are staying in the apartment above ours. He tells us that the rebels put an IED in a flowerpot and used a remote control to detonate the bomb. The blast sent the vehicle flying in the air, Mohammed said. But the soldiers figured it was a RPG attack from the three-story yellow-brick buidling directly across from our hotel. The soldiers then went crazy, unloading everything they had on the three story building, causing it to burst into flames. AFP reported there was return fire. That the resistance was everywhere firing their kalishnakovs at the troops below. But Mohammed says there was no one but the merchants and shoppers, one of whom was shot in the head in the confusion as the soldiers fired wildly -- perhaps at no one. People stood over him screaming for help but he bled to death on the sidewalk. The story about this attack has been dwarfed by the embassy bombing so we are unlikely to see much more detail about it. In the meantime, we are OK. The choppers have left the area, for all is quiet, save for the faint whistle blowing of the night watchmen on our street, the first comforting sound I've heard all night. Now I'll try to get some sleep.