Revenge cycle fragments Iraqi capital

After talking with a Sunni neighbor who also wanted to move his children to a safer place, his brother loaned him a second car and they began to make their way from the neighborhood – past more bodies, with the witness ordering his young relatives to duck their heads beneath the seats, but too late to stop their tears.

In front of the Zahra Hosseiniya – half a mile from Jihad's main police station – he saw gunmen roughly hauling blindfolded men – presumably Sunnis – into a waiting minibus. He called the police emergency line on his cellphone, but there was no answer.

Finally back at the small side road he'd used to get into the neighborhood, the way out had been blocked with tires and concrete. He ordered his 12-year-old nephew, Haider, to hop out, "quick as you can," and remove the obstacles. The gunmen took little notice, and they sped off.

"After about five minutes, we came to a police commando checkpoint. I told them, 'I'm a Shiite, but people are being slaughtered over there, do something,' " he says.

"But they looked at me like I was crazy. 'If we go over there, they'll just run away. Why bother,' one of them said. I was there for over an hour – shooting was almost nonstop – and I didn't see a single police, Iraqi Army, or US Army patrol."

Back at Yarmuk Hospital, bad news unleashed a cacophony of grief for Haider Abdel Satah and his family.

The 13-year-old's father had just died in the operating room, joining his mother and 10 other relatives killed about an hour earlier. Haider said gunmen in uniforms opened fire on the minibus carrying the family and a dead relative – killed in a terrorist attack the day before – to the holy city of Najaf for a funeral.

The attack happened on Mechanic's Bridge in Dora, a Sunni stronghold on Baghdad's southern edge. Insurgents and Iraqi soldiers have been holding prolonged firefights there all week.

The bare-chested boy, his right bicep bandaged where a bullet fragment was extracted, stormed out of the emergency room when a group of Iraqi soldiers arrived with a wounded comrade. His grief became anger.

"You killers and cowards,'' he shouted, an aunt trying to shush him. "You murdered my whole family!"

Haider insisted that the army opened fire on the minibus, though an AP report Tuesday quoted Police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud as saying 10 members of the family were killed by unknown gunmen.

Surrounded by extended family members, Haider was almost chillingly lucid, perhaps a byproduct of his childhood on Baghdad's Haifa street, where hundreds have been killed since the start of the war. He said the family was attacked with an RPK, a heavier variant of Ak-47 that fires 10 rounds per second.

"I've seen the bodies of the wahabbi victims, I've seen the drill holes in their foreheads, but I've never seen as many bodies as I have of my family," he said. "The car came to a halt and they just kept shooting. I was reaching for my Dad's mobile when I got hit."

"I want justice but I know I'm not going to get it."

• Awad al-Taiee in Baghdad contributed reporting for this article.

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