Iraqis wonder why they're targets

By Sarah El Deeb
The Associated Press

	AP Noura Ahmed weeps as she looks for her husband at the bombing scene. She thinks he was in the area when the bomb exploded, but officials couldn't give her any information about his whereabouts.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq — His clothes covered with blood, Karar Abbas broke down after pulling seven bodies from the wreckage of a massive truck bomb yesterday in downtown Baghdad.

"I carried them myself," said Abbas, a civil-defense soldier. "These massacres have become so common."

About 20 people were killed and 63 wounded in the suicide-bombing attack at the entrance to the U.S.-led coalition headquarters, housed in what was once Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace. Nearly all the victims were Iraqis, a reminder that they have suffered greatly in the 9-month-old anti-American insurgency. Initial reports that two American civilian workers were killed could not be confirmed.

While the target may have had symbolic value as the nerve center of the U.S. command, the attackers, who carried 1,000 pounds of explosives in their pickup, would have known that the people most exposed there are the many Iraqis who line up every morning for security checks before entering coalition headquarters for jobs or other business.

U.S. soldiers have dubbed the entrance "Assassin's Gate."

"When they strike, only Iraqis die," said Shaima Ali, a mother of two in her late 20s, cloaked in black in keeping with her Muslim faith.

	DAVID GUTTENFELDER / AP In front of the so-called "Assassin's Gate" next to Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace complex in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police investigate the scene of a car bomb that exploded yesterday. About 20 people were killed and 63 wounded.

"Why do you think we work with them?" she asked, referring to the coalition. "There are no other jobs."

Roadside bombings and suicide attacks have killed 230 U.S. soldiers since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to major hostilities after the March invasion of Iraq.

Yet guerrilla tactics have taken a higher toll among Iraqis: Major insurgent attacks have killed at least 280 civilians.

"These people, along with the Americans, are destroying the Iraqi people," said Mohammed Hussein, a 24-year-old police cadet who heard yesterday's blast in his home two miles away.

The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council described the attackers as terrorists aligned with Saddam. The attack was plotted "to coincide with the morning rush hour to cause maximum number of casualties" among civilians, the council said in a statement.

Sunday is a work day, and nearby shops and schools were already crowded when the bomb hit about 8 a.m.

Iraqis, fearful of the next bombing and frustrated by the behavior of U.S.-led occupation troops, find their plight incomprehensible.

At the Baghdad morgue, a man dropped his cane and wept over the body of his nephew, Hassan Jasim Salman Merza, a blacksmith with a new job and a baby on the way when the bomb killed him.

"Why?" the man cried. "My nephew was going to his work. Now they've taken him from me. Why? He's just like my son. I gave him my daughter for marriage. Nights and days he'd come to hug me."

"What kind of holy war is this?" said Jabbar Challub, a neighbor of Merza's. "Is it holy war to kill innocent Iraqi people? They should kill Americans. These workers have harmed no one. They were waiting in line to go and make a living. We are living in such a bad time that we can only depend on God."

"It's hard to get jobs these days, and Hassan was glad to have his," said Tahseen Ali, another of Merza's neighbors waiting at the morgue.

In a hospital emergency room, Abdullah Daud lay on a cot, blood seeping through bandages on his head.

Nearby lay an older man who had been standing behind him in line. His face was entirely swathed in gauze, and doctors had said he probably would not survive.

"I don't know what kind of Iraqi could do something like this against other Iraqis, exactly at the time when the checkpoint would be most crowded," said Daud, 26, his voice shaking with bewildered rage.

Daud speculated that the suicide bombers must have come from somewhere else, "from Palestine, or from Osama (bin Laden), who thinks he is the new Islamic prophet."

Then the wounded man's anger took another turn.

"It's all the Americans' fault," he said. "They should take care of this country. ... They should help us as they promised they would."

All day, on streets, at the morgue, in hospitals, emotions burst through the shock and pain.

"Please tell me exactly what the Americans are doing here," said Riadh Jamal Haider, 26, as he lay recovering from a chest wound with tubes crisscrossing his body.

"They ruined everything, and now they are just standing here, unable to do anything. All these civilians are dying, and young people have no support — that's why they work at these jobs. If the Americans can't do anything, let them leave this country."

Several witnesses complained that U.S. troops had started firing into the air and pushing back crowds when the blast occurred, adding to the chaos.

Television footage of the bombing aftermath showed U.S. troops bringing out stretchers and carrying some of the injured, but also shoving distraught bystanders away from the area.

"Don't shout at me," an elderly woman yelled in English at an American soldier who tried to keep her away from the blast site later in the day. "My son is in there, somewhere."

"I am not shouting at you, ma'am," the soldier replied, trying to keep back journalists. "If your son is inside (the compound), he should be OK."

The woman broke down and wandered away.

Material from The Washington Post and Knight Ridder Newspapers is included in this report.

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