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Children's Curiosity Proved All Too Deadly This Time
Hat tip: Mudville GazetteArticle is from Oct. 1, but gives an insight to the depravity of the Islamist Jihadis. For many Iraqi children, a car bombing or mortar strike isn't a tragedy. It's the biggest excitement of the week. They are drawn by billowing smoke, police sirens and the certainty that journalists will soon arrive to interview witnesses. The children flood to the scene, pick through debris, wave to television cameras and interact with the U.S. troops who show up to clear the wreckage. So it was Thursday when scores of children rushed to the site of a suicide car bombing in the working-class Amal district of Baghdad. They marveled at the crater left by the bomb, practiced their English on troops and rode bicycles around the American tanks. They accepted candy from a soldier. Then a second suicide bomber barreled down the street toward the U.S. and Iraqi forces — and the children who surrounded them. And then a third. The children were no longer observers of the attack, but its victims. "I saw dead bodies scattered like sheep," said Rashid Salih, 67, describing the scene where his grandson was killed. Children's shoes, clothing and crumpled red bicycles decorated with feathers littered the street. Iraqi health officials said 35 of the 42 fatalities from Thursday's blasts were children. "What really hurt me was that most of the killed or injured people were children," said Moyad Ismail, 25, who saw the U.S. soldier handing out candy minutes before the second explosion. "The children were making a ring around the soldiers." The disaster sent panic through the neighborhood. By Thursday afternoon, nearby Yarmouk Hospital was overrun with parents roaming the hallways and makeshift emergency rooms, looking for their children. At the morgue, stunned mothers and fathers left with only body parts to take home and bury. Posted by: ed 2004-10-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=45124 |