Car Bombs, and Pain, Define a War With No Place to Hide

[maddezmom]

At Ali Abi Talib Hospital, Rahim Kareem Himet was comforted by his aunts. He was shot while trying to rescue victims of a car bombing.


Published: April 20, 2007
BAGHDAD, April 19 — Rahid Sabah Abid, a 25-year-old shop owner, left work on Wednesday afternoon and began his homeward journey on a day that seemed then much like any other. He wended his way through the crowded streets of the Shorja market, then boarded one of the minibuses waiting in the Sadriya neighborhood to take him home to his wife and five daughters in nearby Sadr City.

His first hint of trouble was a car racing against traffic toward the line of buses. “There was no warning,” he recalled. “I saw the explosion in front of me and felt the pain in my legs. The bus was on fire and I jumped out, then began to crawl. There were five burning cars with people in them. I shouted for someone to help.”

He recalled the car bombing, one of five bombings that killed at least 171 Iraqis on Wednesday, from a bed in Ali Abi Talib Hospital where he is recovering with one leg broken, the other badly burned.

Around him, the well-worn beds held other Iraqis whose lives had been changed forever in a moment’s flash of explosives and steel.

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/world/middleeast/20baghdad.html