BAGHDAD — Gafel Hamdani has lived 74 years and raised one daughter and eight sons. On Friday night, his three youngest sons were stretched out on the floor of his living room in simple caskets -- killed when a missile hit a Baghdad neighborhood.
"What can I tell you?" the old man said dejectedly as male neighbors gathered around him and the women keened in the next room.
"Isn't the sight of them enough?" he asked, pointing to his sons, ages 12, 18 and 20.
Grief and shock seized the working-class Shualla district of northwestern Baghdad after a missile slammed into a crowded market area at dusk, killing more than 50 people and injuring about 50 others, hospital workers and residents said.
"I don't remember so many injured people, so much blood everywhere, in this hospital before," said Dr. Haqqi Razouki of the nearby Nour Hospital. "Even doctors and nurses were shocked."
The blast, like a midday missile strike that killed 15 people in another part of the Iraqi capital Wednesday, fanned anti-American passions and accusations that the United States is targeting civilians. U.S. spokesmen have rejected the accusations, saying they have gone to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and suggested that in some cases Iraqi weapons could have been responsible for the deaths.
Iraqi authorities are highlighting civilian casualties in their political campaign to put pressure on the U.S. and British forces approaching Baghdad. Government ministers and spokesmen use every opportunity to reiterate claims that the United States wants to terrorize the population.
But strikes on civilian neighborhoods have been relatively rare, and that's one reason many people in the Shualla district were outside -- buying food, meeting with neighbors and trying to live a somewhat normal life -- even while the U.S. bombing was going on a short distance away.
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Waiting for Treatment
At Nour Hospital, blood-covered patients moaned as they awaited treatment Friday night.
"People were so badly injured that they were dying in our hands," said Razouki, who had patients lined up for an available operating room.
Before midnight, hospital staff reported 51 deaths. Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf later put the number of dead at 58.
The missile that struck Shualla's Nasr marketplace, a kind of cul-de-sac filled with about 20 metal stalls selling fruit, vegetables and household items, fell in the middle of the street and sent blast waves and shrapnel in all directions.
