So much awfulness, every bloody day, it's hard to know where to start. I'm not one of these full-time bloggers either, so I have to pick and choose my outrages. But this wedding-party massacre is pretty infuriating.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one'
Survivors describe wedding massacre as generals refuse to apologiseRory McCarthy in Ramadi
Friday May 21, 2004
The GuardianThe wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the sky above.
It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.
'The bombing started at 3am,' she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. 'We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one,' she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.