Feature guest on Nine to Noon, Radio New Zealand – Donna Mulhearn – Iraq.mp3
Her eye witness accounts are incredible, they are in the mp3 and here is a sample from the web:
War Diary 13 – Blood in the marketplace
Saturday March 29
The blood was in pools on the ground. Just like you’d see puddles of rainwater, well these were puddles of blood.
We were at a marketplace in a poor, working class area of Baghdad that was bombed the night before. It’s a ram-shackled place at the best of times, but today it was complete devastation.
More than 60 people were killed in the blast and hundreds seriously injured. The local hospital is overwhelmed. Our doctor friends reported later that it was starting to run out of anesthetics and antibiotics.
The local people here are angry. They threw their fists in the air and shouted in defiance at the coalition forces.
These are Shi`ite Muslims, the type of people who traditionally oppose Saddam Hussein. These are the people the invaders were hoping would join them.
They won’t get any recruits in this neighbourhood.
Today these people were mourning their dead loved ones blown apart by the new enemy. While the regime may have caused them pain, today all they could feel was the pain of death and blood and bodies burnt and maimed.
In their anger, they looked at us for answers, but we had none. They called out in desperation…
“We do not support this,” one of our group, Osama, said in Arabic to a local man. “We stand for peace.”
They argued for a moment in Arabic, then the man went quiet, he took Osama’s hand. They embraced and this proud man started to sob in front of all of us.
I walked away my eyes stinging and my head about to explode. Everything I feared about this war, the death, the misery the suffering… it’s unfolding before my eyes…