‘Hell’ came to street in just 60 seconds

IN 60 seconds, Street 602 in Baghdad’s Qadissiyah quarter was blasted into a scene from a nightmare, witnesses said yesterday.

“It was just before the last prayer,” said Faysal Saadi, 70, standing on this narrow road in a closely knit neighbourhood of low houses, a hospital and a school.

“It was hell. Something incredible. Stones flew in every direction, shards from the windows, pieces of pipe,” said the economist, the fear still in his eyes.

Yesterday morning, a crater about 10 meters deep and some 20 meters in diameter marked the spot where his friend Abdel Shamel Samarai’s house had stood.

Three other demolished houses tower over the gaping hole filled with water.

Through his account and those of other neighbours, what happened on Street 602 in Qadissiyah, a district in the south of the capital, begins to take shape.

“Six missiles exploded in the area within 60 seconds,” said Ahmed Hamid Al Saadi, 67, still standing in his pyjamas and bathrobe as he answered journalists’ questions.

The reporters’ expedition to the site was organised by the Iraqi information ministry to document what it called American war “crimes”.

Beneath his polite manner, the foreman of a factory for plastic spare parts can barely contain his anger.

“Bush is an animal, I have nothing to say to him,” he said in response to a question by an American journalist about US President George W Bush.

“He already knows what I could say to him. The world told him before I did. There was no reason to start this war,” he fumed.

According to people in the neighbourhood, Abu Shamel Samarai’s house was empty at the moment it was levelled by a missile. But two neighbours were injured, including young Rafael and his grandmother Halima.

“They were lucky,” said Ahmed Mohamed, a 40-year-old restaurant owner who lives in a house opposite the site and is still in a state of shock.

Saadi, the retired economist, said they were taken to the neighbouring Yarmuk hospital, the capital’s largest.

The destruction speaks volumes about the power of the explosion that ripped through the neighbourhood on Saturday at about 7:30pm.

Three houses near the crater were literally sliced in half.

The remaining furniture in one of them appears intact and a mirror is still hanging on the wall. The ceiling fans remain motionless but were not ripped off by the force of the explosion.

A palm tree was felled and lies on its side, half-covered by rubble and bricks.

Standing on the ruins, Ahmed Amer Salman, 45, seems not to know what to do with the half of his house that remains.

“There is no military target in this district,” he tells journalists.

Abdel Shamel Samarai, the owner of the targeted house, is a retired general with a heart condition who opted to leave the capital before the war for the relative shelter of the city of Samarra.

But Samarai’s former post does not seem sufficient grounds for neighbour Ahmed Hamid Al Saadi to justify the attack.

In the ruins of the house, Saturday’s explosion left behind a strange mix of artifacts. Ripped pages from the Koran lie with comic books in Arabic telling of the adventures of Superman, the American superhero in the blue suit and red cape who single-handedly saves the world.