BAGHDAD, 27 March 2003 — Tawfiq Radi Farhan, a street vendor, said he watched them slaughtered before his very own eyes. “I was sitting outside when the missile hit,” he said, still shaken. “Cars caught fire and I myself saw people martyred and wounded. Thank God I didn’t get hurt.”
This working-class Baghdad neighborhood known as “the city of the people” was picking up the pieces, in grief and in rage, after a US-led bombing raid smashed into apartment blocks yesterday, killing 14 people and wounding 30.
Piles of rubble lay in the street, as a dull rain watered down the pools of blood. Something far heavier than the debris weighed on people’s hearts. “They say they only aim at military targets,” shouted Ali Sami, who said he was a loyal supporter of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. “And then they launch bombs on our women and children.”
Friends and neighbors pitched in to try to salvage the remaining belongings of those who lived, and console the relatives of those who didn’t. Seif Jamal, a 20-year-old student, rushed down his narrow stairway carrying a charred television on his shoulder. “A missile landed on the sidewalk and the shrapnel flew into our house,” he said.
The devastation came just before midday. Abdul Jabbar Ali, a mechanic, said he was with his family when the attack pounded the apartments, wiping out his garage on the ground floor.
“Miraculously, we lived. Whole sections of walls were crashing down around me, doors and windows were demolished,” said Ali, who escaped with bruises.
