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‘Today Has Been a Noisy Day in Baghdad’

By Gina Chon

As I walked around today in the back of the PX parking lot, located across the street from the U.S. Embassy, I saw about a dozen cars that had their windows blown out from the blast. And when I walked around the other side of the “duck and cover” bunker that I’ve stood in countless times, I saw a big chunk of missing concrete where the mortar or rocket had landed.

Today has been a noisy day in Baghdad and in other areas of Iraq. Up in Mosul, where al Qaeda in Iraq still has a stronghold, a suicide car bomb killed 12 members of the Iraqi army and wounded 35. Across Iraq, more than 40 people were killed today.

Here in the capital, the day hadn’t started for most people when a barrage of mortar rounds or rockets landed in the Green Zone, now formally known as the International Zone, early this morning. Many embassy staff, who live in trailers that don’t offer protection from indirect fire, woke up and ran into their duck and cover bunkers.

A few hours after that, we heard more explosions. Then one of my Iraqi colleagues got a phone call from his wife saying she just heard two explosions in their neighborhood. This afternoon, a suicide car bomb exploded in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Shula-Nur, killing five Iraqis and wounding seven. As we celebrated a friend’s birthday this evening, we heard another round of booms.

The indirect fire attacks against the Green Zone are believed to be coming from the Sadr City area of Baghdad, which is controlled by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. Several weeks ago, Sadr extended for another six months a cease fire of the Mahdi Army, but there are elements linked to his group that are not obeying his call.

My friends and I wondered if there was an additional message that the attackers in Baghdad wanted to send, other than to prove that they are still lethal, despite the downturn in overall violence. One person said the message was simply, “It’s not over.”

But we all still went about our day as we always do. I went to a press conference and stopped inside the PX to buy some snacks and magazines. At my friend’s birthday gathering, we laughed and chatted as the explosions went off. But today, we made certain that we drove around in our armored car, just in case.

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    • I’d love to hear more from unembedded journalists. For an unfiltered perspective on life outside of Iraq’s green zone, read: “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq” by Dahr Jamail.

    • The conflicf will continue with or without us so get the HELL OUT and give and Valient Soldiers, Airmen and Sailors a rest!!!

    • Senator McCain … sir … it appears the surge is working.

    • Give the elected officials 2 weeks to leave the fortified chancery in the IZ and live among the people who democratically elected them. This would make them more interested in providing security in the city.

    • So much for Dubya’s surge. This only proves what an idiot Dubya is in the first place to have got us into this mess.

      There is no end to this madness. But Dubya will enjoy his retirement. But he will burn in hell for all the things he did to the Iraqis and Americans.