For the 223 people who lost their lives in Iraq Wednesday, and their friends and families.
In the bloodiest attack, a parked car exploded on a principal intersection and in a busy market area in the downtown district of Al-Sadriyah, scattering charred corpses among a row of burnt-out buses.
A fire incinerated human flesh, cars and vehicles after a deafening blast that sent a dense cloud of putrid black smoke spewing into the afternoon sky as rescue workers screeched through the streets to scenes of horror.
Fire engines doused nearby cars and buses as dozens of ambulances and pick-up trucks ferried the wounded to hospital and civilian volunteers wrapped charred bodies in carpets for transport to the city’s overflowing morgues.
Angry Iraqis who lost loved ones lashed out at Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, blaming his beleaguered government for failing to bring law and order to the streets of the capital, nearly a year after it took office.
“Down with Maliki! Where is the security plan? We are not protected by this plan,” they shouted as an angry mob pelted stones at Iraqi and American soldiers who scrambled to the scene.
On February 3, a suicide bomber blew up a Mercedes truck in the same Baghdad market, a mixed Kurdish and Shiite area, killing at least 130 people in the final days before the crackdown was officially launched on February 14.
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