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Terror at firsthand

Paul McGeough, journalist and author of the excellent book "Kill Khalid" [a must read by the way] writing for the Fairfax press in Australia reports in "Suriving Terror" on being caught up in the bombings in Baghdad the other day.

"You'll hear on arriving in Baghdad these days that there's the odd bombing, but the Iraqi capital is safer than it has been for years. Signs of this new sense of security are everywhere.

They are misleading".

And:

"About 3.40pm, I was in my eighth-floor room at the Hamra Hotel in the Jadriya district, when an ominous, dull thud drew me to a window - a thin plume of smoke was rising above the cheek-by-jowl towers of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels on the banks of the Tigris River, about seven kilometres to the north-east.

Putting it down to the same-old, same-old of a violent city from which I had been absent for a couple of years, I returned to my desk. But minutes later the entire Hamra moved on its foundations as a huge cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the high-rise Babylon Hotel, about 2.5 kilometres to the south-east and close by the fortress US embassy. Windows shattered in surrounding buildings.

As emergency service sirens filled the air and security choppers flew in over the stricken hotels, wild, persistent gunfire drew me to the balcony off my room. Kurdish forces, stationed on a main road about 100 metres from the Hamra as security for the nearby presidential palace, were under attack from unseen insurgent gunmen.

What followed was surreal."

Read on here.

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