In this tense environment, children walked along streets, watching the patrol. Some waved at the soldiers and smiled; when the convoy briefly stopped, they surrounded the Iraqi guardsmen and talked with them. Then, as the convoy drove away, the mood changed. Some children threw rocks at the vehicles.
Around 2:45 p.m., the convoy made its way back to a large vacant lot near the southern edge of Sadr City, where it was joined by vehicles from other units patrolling the area. Two M1-A2 Abrams tanks were pointed at the neighborhood.
Ahmed Khaleb, a guardsman and driver, was hospitalized after the bomb blast. His commander said civilian vehicles are "not right for the army."
(Steve Fainaru -- The Washington Post)
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Lt. Tye Graham, 23, of Pecos, Tex., said commanders had decided to use the lot as a staging area for a raid on insurgents thought to have plotted a bombing in Sadr City that had injured two Americans about two hours earlier.
Behind the Nissan, Sgt. Anthony Stewart, 31, of Sumter, S.C., sat in his Humvee, watching the Iraqi guardsmen. Two were sitting in the rear bed of the pickup; one was swigging water spiked with rehydration powder that the U.S. soldiers had given him. But he was spitting the water into the dirt.
"Look at those guys, they don't know how to drink it," said Stewart. He said later that he thought about getting out of the Humvee and walking over to explain that they needed to swallow the powdered water for it to be effective.
Before he could do that, the air filled with an orange fireball that seemed to erupt about 10 feet to the right of the Nissan.
The smoke from the explosion cleared after about 30 seconds, revealing the carnage.
"We have ING wounded!" Stewart shouted into the radio. "ING are down!"
The truck had offered no protection. The man who had been swigging the water was slumped against the rear of the cab, his eyes open, his body bloodied and motionless. The man next to him also appeared to have been killed instantly; his body lay against the left side of the truck, his right hand spread across his lap. Blood and parts of his brain and skull trickled down the left rear panel.
Inside the cab, two others were dead; a man in the passenger seat had two ball bearings lodged in his forehead.
Khaleb, the driver, managed to open his door and take a few steps toward the company medic, Spec. Justin "Doc" Martin, who was riding in the Humvee in front of the Nissan. But then Khaleb collapsed in the dirt and crawled until the medic reached him.
Martin cut off the man's bloodied clothing and began to treat him for arterial bleeding.
Another soldier shouted that the gunner in Martin's Humvee was also down. The man, who was unconscious, had been blown back into the gunner's hatch.
"We got him woken up," Martin said later. "He didn't know where he was. He didn't know who I was."
