By Gina Chon
At least 10 people, including four Americans and six Iraqis, were killed today in an explosion at a District Advisory Council office in Sadr City. The bomb went off around 9:30 am, just before a meeting was to have begun between the U.S. military and Iraqi officials.

The American deaths included two soldiers and two civilians, one who worked for the U.S. Defense Department and the other for the State Department. The explosion shattered the relative calm that has been seen in Sadr City since a truce in mid-May ended fighting there between the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi government. The U.S. military blamed “special groups,” which is its term for rogue members of the Mahdi Army.
When I heard the news, I called someone who I thought was going to Sadr City today. Then I contacted a few American soldiers I met during my embedded reporting trip a few weeks ago there to make sure they were OK. I also called an Iraqi friend who lives there.
It’s a routine that many Iraqis are used to: making the round of calls after an explosion to make sure friends and family members are accounted for. It’s always a nerve-wracking process. I’ve sent emails to Iraqi friends, only to find out a week later they had been killed. Or I’ve called friends who didn’t answer their phone, later to be told by mutual friends that they had been kidnapped and no one had heard from them since.
The Sadr City explosion came a day after a former Iraqi municipal council member shot two American soldiers and an interpreter dead in Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad. And on Sunday, a female suicide bomber killed at least 15 Iraqis outside a government building in Baqouba, in Diyala province.
“It will only harden the determination of this council, the citizens of Sadr City, the Iraqi Army, and coalition forces,” Lt. Col. John Digiambatista, operations officer for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division, said of the Sadr City bombing.
Overall violence has gone down in Iraq. But that is little consolation when you have to make those uneasy phone calls to friends and family to see if they are OK. My Iraqi friends say they always imagine the worst when they can’t make contact. I’m still waiting to hear from the soldiers.
Iraq viloence is trending down even with these incidents?
This war is effectively over.
How do you know when this war is over?
When more people are killed in a Kentuckey shoot out then in Baghdad.
America is so much more violent then the Middle East even with the war in Iraq has a hard time competing with our natural level of violence.
Likewise about the post. I, myself, am checking in on my best friend who is also in Sadr City. I’ve already lost a friend and am paranoid about losing another.
Gina,
Thanks for your post. Our son is stationed in Sadr City and, indeed, it is excruciating to see the reports and be unable to confirm his status. We wait knowing that even if it is “good news” for us, it will be unimaginable grief for some other mother, father, sisters, brothers, wives, friends and possibly children. Yet he serves with knowledge of these risks and a deep abiding conviction that this service is important.