Prayers were just ending at the al-Baya' mosque in west Baghdad on Friday when the two young men stepped from a minibus taxi and approached the entrance. They wore black, like the hundreds of worshippers gathered inside and outside, but something was wrong.
The younger one, no older than 18, tried to pass security guards without being searched while his companion, about 25, walked to the far side of the entrance before heading for the doorway.
That was as much warning the Shia mosque had that it was under attack, the latest target of suicide bombers who strike almost daily in Iraq on a scale never before seen anywhere, a test case in terror for the population.
Once challenged by the guard, witnesses said yesterday, the teenager's rigid expression turned to terror, the eyes widening, the mouth gaping. He knew what was about to happen.
Lunging forward, he threw a bomb with a fuse, possibly dynamite, at a throng of worshippers. The guards opened fire and hit him in the belly, detonating his explosives belt. The top of his head flew towards the road, the bottom half and his torso towards the mosque, the legs just disintegrated. Two worshippers were wounded by shrapnel.
His companion ran towards the entrance but he too was gunned down. His explosives belt detonated and ball-bearings whizzed into those nearest, killing two men, a truck driver and a banana seller, and wounding five. Another version said he was running away from the mosque when he exploded.
The blast scattered the bomber over 100 metres. 'Bits of burning flash were landing all over the place,' said Saad Ali, 35, a security guard.
A third attacker materialised, a gunman some distance away who opened fire on survivors. In the confusion and melée, it was not clear if he hit anyone before he fled.
There was some smoke and an acrid smell but no panic, said another guard, Ridah Zaid, 45. There was an almost unnatural silence as the wounded were loaded into cars and ferried to hospital. 'Then we started chanting.'
Police took the remains of the bombers' heads for possible identification. Mosque officials buried the larger fragments of the bombers in a small hole by the road where the first one died. Empty cigarette packets and blue plastic bag marked the spot.
Smaller fragments still lit tered the area yesterday, what appeared to be a bit of rib on the pavement, congealed strips of blackened flesh the size and shape of slugs on the mosque walls.
For most of the worshippers it was their first experience of a suicide bombing yet in the aftermath they seemed resigned rather than terrified. 'Next Friday we will be back, you'll see,' said Ammar Oda, 33. Those around him nodded.
They had escaped relatively lightly. Hours before al-Baya' was hit, a suicide bomber killed 15 at the al-Khadimain mosque in the south of the city. Other bombs have killed 60 people at a time. As followers and militia members of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the al-Baya' worshippers were militant Shias.
While talking to The Observer they did not flinch at a blast from several miles away - a suicide bomb outside another Shia mosque, killing four and wounding 39, many of them mourners attending funerals of some of those caught in Friday's slaughter. Another 19 people died, including a US soldier, in suicide attacks on a Shia mosque and shrine in north Baghdad.
Multiple attacks were expected in the run-up to yesterday's festival of Ashura, when Shias commemorate the 7th-century martyrdom of the grandson of the prophet Mohammad and Islam's schism into Shia and Sunni branches. This time last year bombers killed at least 180.
After decades of oppression, Shias, who comprise 60 per cent of the population, are preparing to take power and Sunnis, a privileged minority under Saddam, are in the political wilderness.
The insurgents, a mixture of Islamic radicals and former members of the Baathist regime, hope that the attacks will destabilise the country. 'It is the rage of losers. No matter how many they kill, we have won,' said one Shia cleric.
Political ascendancy might seem an abstract comfort to Shias who have been killed while buying bread, queuing outside government buildings or, of course, worshipping.
Yet the community is not cowed. Emboldened by the 30 January election, when most Shias voted despite fears of attacks, men, women and children this week packed mosques for Ashura.
Individual bombers inflict less damage than before. Every day Shia mosques add to their panoply of sentries, razor wire, bollards and blast-proof walls. The strategy is not to prevent detonation, but induce it prematurely.
And the terror on the face of Friday's bomber might have been the knowledge that another mission had failed.
Rory Carroll Baghdad Sunday February 20, 2005 The Observer
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