http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/international/middleeast/29road.html?ei=5094&en=96b0de3b2a9230f2&hp=&ex=1117425600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=printIraqis call it Death Street. To American soldiers, it is "I.E.D. Alley," after the improvised explosive devices - bombs - that are lethally common on the 10 miles of expressway and city streets that make up Baghdad's airport road.
Suicide bombers in cars packed with explosives lurk at on-ramps, waiting for American convoys or other targets.
Insurgents in cars with darkened windows mingle in traffic, then lower windows for bursts of machine-gun fire. Disguised as members of a road crew, they bury daisy-chained artillery shells beneath the roadway, then trigger them with garage-door openers and cellphones.
But it took Italy's fury over the shooting of one of the country's top intelligence agents earlier this year for the American military command to acknowledge publicly that driving the airport road is a form of Russian roulette. "Route Irish is commonly referred to as 'the deadliest road in Iraq' by journalists, soldiers and commanders," the command declared recently, in a report that underscored the stresses affecting the American platoon that fired on the Italian agent's car.
Route Irish is the military code name for the expressway arcing eastward from what was once Saddam International Airport, flanked by mainly Sunni Arab neighborhoods like Amariya, Hamra, Jihad and Qaddisiya that were strongholds of support for Saddam Hussein. Like neighborhoods across the Tigris River from Mr. Hussein's seat of power in the Republican Palace, these suburbs - some little more than slums, others thick with palm-shaded mansions - were populated with Hussein loyalists by design. Ever alert to potential assassins, the dictator, a Sunni Arab, built Sunni suburbs at strategic points around the city to shield him from attack.
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