BAGHDAD, 3 March 2004 — The first blast went off just behind us on a road we had walked down only minutes before.
My driver Saad Shalash and I turned on foot and started toward the bomb site some 150 meters away. Minutes later a second bomb exploded, again just behind us.
It was chaos. We turned down a small side street. People were running and crying, carrying the wounded and trying to get away.
As we reached the end of the street, the third blast sounded. I was thrown to the ground. Saad was hit in the arm by shrapnel. I had to scrape pieces of other people’s flesh off his shirt.
We ran in the other direction. I lost Saad, everyone was panicking. And then there was a fourth blast, all in the space of 10 or 15 minutes. Ambulances wailed. People ran backward and forward like crazy.
I went to the scene and saw bodies piled onto a wooden cart, bloody wounds and people screaming.
Some angry men came up to me with machine guns. They were shouting “No America, no America” and threatened to kill me.
Saad appeared from nowhere, kissed one of the men on the cheeks, spoke to him in Arabic and calmed him down. Then we were able to get away.
