http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L29559168An appointment in Samarra
Reuters correspondent Luke Baker covered the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 as an embedded journalist and has reported on the country from our Baghdad bureau for the last two years. The following is his personal account of how the atmosphere of death and destruction has become ever more insistent as acquaintances and friends are struck down. It has been updated following the killing on Sunday of Reuters soundman Waleed Khaled.
By Luke Baker
BAGHDAD, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Death creeps up on you in Iraq. The longer you remain amid the country's violence, the more insistent, the more bullying it becomes.
Over time, more people you know die, or are maimed, or have scrapes with death that leave them psychologically scarred.
....
Almost every week, someone on the staff at Reuters, just one of a dozen or so news organisations still operating in the country, has a new tale to tell of a relative -- a brother, a mother, a cousin, or a son -- killed in terrible circumstances.
....
Sometimes the horror stories come out of nowhere. I met an Iraqi Airways official in northern Iraq two weeks ago and we chatted for a while about his life and family. Last week I called to see how he was doing and he broke down on the phone.
"It's too terrible," he said. "I came home from work three days ago and as my son was running to say hello to me, he collapsed on the ground. I went to him and he was covered in blood." His son, 10-year-old Mohammed, had been hit by a stray bullet. It went through his neck, severing his vertebrae, and left him paralysed from the waist down.
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