Face That Screamed War’s Pain Looks Back, 6 Hard Years Later

[sasha031]

Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war. "My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital and on the way back, this happened,” Samar said. “We just heard bullets. “My mother and father were killed, just like that.”

The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya.

The photograph of Samar is frozen in history, but her life moved on, across a trajectory that is emblematic of what so many Iraqis have endured. In a country whose health care system has almost no ability to treat the psychological aspects of trauma, thousands of Iraqis are left alone with their torment.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/world/middleeast/07photo.html?_r=1

[ET Awful]

1. It's also worth noting that the photographer that took those photos was killed in Libya

in April of this year.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/parting-glance-chris-hondros/?ref=africa

[sasha031]

2. yes I know, the story of those Iraq children has always haunted me.