Another Terrifying Day

A day in the life of Nabil, a student in Baghdad:

...I was at my grandma's house which happens to be next door to my house. Me and my cousin were at the back garden playing soccer and mocking each other. Suddenly we heard a very loud noise of mortar missile passing over us. I said "did you hear it?" and by the time he was saying "yes", a huge explosion took place. It was very close to us, we couldn't tell where it exactly fell as it was too close. We ran inside my grandma's house and waited there for several minutes.
Shortly after that, we heard screaming, shouting and people running in the street, we ran out to the street to see what happened.

At first, I couldn't see as there was a lot of dust and ashes in the air, then my vision cleared and I saw smoke clouds coming out from the roof of the house of my neighbor which is in front of my house. Instinctively I ran with the people to the inside of my neighbor's house to check for survivors. There were women all over the place shouting and screaming "help him, help him, he is at the roof", meanwhile mortar missiles were falling here and there very close to us. Me and several people ran to the roof of the house, and there was my neighbor lying on the floor with his legs got cut due to the explosion and he was severely bleeding and there was blood stains all over him. I was completely shocked, scared and terrified, I stood there and didn't know what to do. A man who was standing next to me shouted on me "come on!, grab him with me, lets take him to the hospital." I ran to him and carried my neighbor with him, we went down to the street carrying my neighbor where a kind man stopped his car and took us with him to the hospital.

Although I tied his cut off legs and squeezed on it trying to stop the bleeding, but by the time we arrived to the hospital, he was already gone, as he was bleeding severely.

In the hospital they didn't do anything to him, because he was already dead, they took him to the bodies refrigerator.shortly after his son (my neighbor's son) arrived to the hospital, he was shouting and crying "where is he? I wanna see him." We went to the bodies refrigerator, and it wasn't actually a refrigerator, bodies were lying on the floor, as there were too many bodies and there weren't enough rooms for them in the frig. The view of the bodies lying on the floor was very disgusting and sad, most of the bodies were victims of the mortar attacks.

Anyway, my neighbor relatives came to the hospital and brought a coffin for their dead relative, we took the body and headed back to my neighbor house, so that his wife and kids can see him for the last time before they bury him. I told them not to take him to his parents, because it would be very painful for his kids to see their father dead and his legs cut off. Anyway, his son insisted on taking him back home. We took him back to his house, and there was his wife and kids waiting for him and by that time they didn't know whether their father was dead or not. By the time they saw the coffin they started screaming, shouting and crying. I was very touched seeing the tears of his little kids crying with so much pain.

Shortly after that, his son said "lets take him to the cemetery, I want him to be buried before it gets dark". so they took him to the cemetery right away. they considered him as a martyr.(In islam the martyr should be buried right away, with his blood and with his clothes he was wearing when he died). Anyway, we went to the cemetery, and the handlers started to bury him. I was standing with my cousin, near them watching them, before they were done closing his grave, another round of mortar attacks took place very very close to the cemetery, people just started to run and left his grave not completely closed, Me and my cousin closed his grave and ran to the car and headed back home.

When me and my cousin went back, my neighbors told us that another mortar missile fell on my grandma's house but it didn't explode. Thank god it didn't explode because my grandma was alone in the house.

Thats what happened yesterday. God knows what more can happen."

Stories like this highlight the fact that much of the violence in Iraq is indiscriminate- Mortar shells land and kill innocent Iraqis randomly, without regard to their sectarian identity.