The thundering blast rocks me awake at 7:05 a.m. The first thing my eyes see are the curtains of my room flowing in, as if a strong wind is blowing into my room.
"Holy sh*t, they hit the embassy," I think to myself, the blast was so close.
I leave my windows cracked and curtains drawn for just this reason – while my door was blasted open, splintering the frame where it was locked shut, none of my windows shattered. Aside from small chunks from the ceiling of my room strewn about the floor, I am all right.
I look out my window and see that despite shattered glass strewn outside many of the nearby buildings, the Australian embassy is intact.
I quickly throw on some clothes, grab my camera, and run into the hall, which is filled with so much dust it’s difficult to see.
In this hall, as well as all the others I see as I run upstairs, pieces of ceiling and broken glass are everywhere.
The suicide car bomb detonated near the base of a large building across the street that is home to many Australian soldiers. From there, they guard the checkpoint to their nearby embassy from the multistory building with snipers. Two smoldering bits of a vehicle sit near the building, and two bodies lie in pools of blood across the street.
A small building near the Australian outpost received heavy damage right in front of the detonated car. Despite being heavily fortified with concrete barriers, razor wire, sand bags, and sand barriers, the outpost has chunks blown out of it, and the netting and plywood that covers many of the windows is hanging haphazardly out of the openings.
I am on the roof just minutes after the blast and the Iraqi police (IP) have already arrived en masse. A woman screaming in hysterics is pushed inside one of their trucks and taken away … she was trying to reach one of the bodies when several policeman ushered her off.
Other IPs inspect the bodies while black smoke plumes languidly drift down the street in the early morning stillness.
Police run about, yelling orders and barking at journalists, but there is nothing much else for them to do. They load the two bodies into a vehicle and drive them to a morgue.
It is a seemingly senseless attack, as this building occupied by the Australian military is so heavily fortified that no car bomb could possibly reach it. This one caused merely superficial damage and killed only civilians while wounding some Australian soldiers.
This was a smaller car bomb, as it didn’t leave a crater like so many of the others. Nevertheless, glass is shattered in buildings hundreds of meters away from the blast, pieces of wall are crumbled … it is like being in a large earthquake, but the tremors consolidated into one large shake.
About 20 minutes later, several truckloads of Iraqi soldiers show up, many of them wearing their usual black masks.
Fifteen minutes after this, the U.S. military shows up with 10 Humvees, a Bradley, and a large tank. They seal the street and begin to string their razor wire across the road.
Two Apache helicopters arrive and commence rumbling in circles around the area, buzzing overhead.
I watch an old woman who lives in a home just across from the bombing. She is walking around in her yard aimlessly, sometimes stopping to slowly pick up rubble from her wall that was damaged in the blast, then just looking around her home.
Half an hour after this, another large car bomb detonates in eastern Baghdad at an Iraqi police headquarters, killing 18 people as the explosion echoes across the capital city.
I return to my room to commence writing … Abu Talat calls and can’t make it over for our work because so many roads near my hotel are closed.
As I write, three more huge explosions rumble across the center of Baghdad. In a span of just 90 minutes, five car bombs detonate, killing at least 26 people.
One of the car bombs detonates outside a bank where IPs are collecting their salaries, killing at least 10 of them.
Another car bomb detonates at the airport, killing two guards.
A military installation is also attacked, killing two American soldiers and two civilians.
Iraqis around my hotel compound are sweeping up glass as I make some calls to let folks know I’m alive.
The U.S.-backed Iraqi government has announced draconian measures stating that from Jan. 29-31 the borders of Iraq will be closed, mobile and satellite phone services will be cut, the borders of Iraq’s 18 governorates will be closed, and no civilian traffic will be allowed near the polling stations.
Polling stations will each have several rings of security in an attempt to stave off the violence. Be that as it may, the Ministry of Health is making special preparations to deal with the massive bloodshed expected for the "elections."
