Violence in Sadr City Embitters Both Sides (WP Page A01) [View All]

[Beetwasher]

BAGHDAD, April 5 -- To the soldiers inside the armored vehicles ringing with the sound of bullets, the night was one long ambush. It began with a sneak attack -- rocket-propelled grenades fired from an alley, shredding Humvees and the Americans inside -- then quickly escalated into a nightlong firefight. The battleground was the vast warren of narrow streets called Sadr City, but it suddenly reminded 1st Lt. Dave Swanson of Mogadishu.

--snip--

At one point, U.S. fire tore into an ambulance driven by Raad Diaheer Lazem, who took a bullet in the abdomen. Rounds from a .50-caliber machine gun punctured the vehicle 100 yards from the entrance to Chawadir Hospital, killing a pregnant woman with a leg wound and the 6-year-old son riding with her to the hospital.

"The lights were on, the siren -- all the things an ambulance should use in a battle zone," Lazem said. "I don't know why they shot at me. When I left the hospital they saw me. I was shuttling patients back and forth all night."

Muntahah Shekhawer, who works in the children's ward, broke down in tears as she recalled children carried into the emergency room. "I felt so bad I couldn't save them," she said. "Two, 3 years old. All of them shot in the head. Always in the head.

--snip--


I don't know what to say. It's over, it's all over and there's no going back. I expect the good days in Iraq will now be days when there's only a couple of dead US soldiers and only dozens of dead Iraqi's...