Monday, March 19, 2007
Deaths become a constant blur in Iraq - A.P.
Only the gravediggers, some distant relatives and a few cousins made it to Nidal Faleh's funeral.
It was too dangerous for her immediate family to make the short trip from Baghdad to where she was killed in the Triangle of Death during a visit to see her elderly mother, or to bring her body back to the capital.
Instead, in this culture where a funeral is an important religious ritual and must take place soon after death, nearly no one was there as 49-year-old Faleh was buried.
...
It was a warm spring Sunday morning and Faleh had spent the weekend visiting her elderly mother in her hometown of Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.
Married late in life and without any children, she was the sibling in the family who did the most for their ailing mother, visiting her regularly, her sisters say.
Shortly before 7 a.m., Faleh was in a hurry to get back to Baghdad to teach an 8:30 a.m. class. She washed down a piece of cheese with tea, kissed her mother and an aunt on their cheeks and walked out the door with her cousin, Kawkab Faleh, 42. Nidal Faleh drove.
"She asked me to pray for her as she left me ... Half an hour later, they gave me the news of the car," her mother said weeping, as relatives and friends gathered around at a mourning gathering last week at a son's home in Baghdad.
Two male cousins in Youssifiyah received the call, telling them a roadside bomb had detonated underneath the car, killing the two cousins. They rushed to the scene.
The explosive device, connected to a wire, had been hidden under dirt close to the highway's median and detonated under the driver's side, setting the white Oldsmobile aflame. It took Iraqi security men from a nearby checkpoint more than a half-hour to put out the fire.
Only skeletons remained of the two women; identity cards and the university exam papers Faleh had corrected until the early hours Sunday were burned to ashes. ...
The roadside bomb had most likely been intended for U.S. troops or Iraqi security forces. ...
Only the gravediggers, some distant relatives and a few cousins made it to Nidal Faleh's funeral.
It was too dangerous for her immediate family to make the short trip from Baghdad to where she was killed in the Triangle of Death during a visit to see her elderly mother, or to bring her body back to the capital.
Instead, in this culture where a funeral is an important religious ritual and must take place soon after death, nearly no one was there as 49-year-old Faleh was buried.
...
It was a warm spring Sunday morning and Faleh had spent the weekend visiting her elderly mother in her hometown of Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.
Married late in life and without any children, she was the sibling in the family who did the most for their ailing mother, visiting her regularly, her sisters say.
Shortly before 7 a.m., Faleh was in a hurry to get back to Baghdad to teach an 8:30 a.m. class. She washed down a piece of cheese with tea, kissed her mother and an aunt on their cheeks and walked out the door with her cousin, Kawkab Faleh, 42. Nidal Faleh drove.
"She asked me to pray for her as she left me ... Half an hour later, they gave me the news of the car," her mother said weeping, as relatives and friends gathered around at a mourning gathering last week at a son's home in Baghdad.
Two male cousins in Youssifiyah received the call, telling them a roadside bomb had detonated underneath the car, killing the two cousins. They rushed to the scene.
The explosive device, connected to a wire, had been hidden under dirt close to the highway's median and detonated under the driver's side, setting the white Oldsmobile aflame. It took Iraqi security men from a nearby checkpoint more than a half-hour to put out the fire.
Only skeletons remained of the two women; identity cards and the university exam papers Faleh had corrected until the early hours Sunday were burned to ashes. ...
The roadside bomb had most likely been intended for U.S. troops or Iraqi security forces. ...
Labels: war
Comments:
Post a Comment
| Get a hit counter here. |
