In Iraq, Sweet Promise Struck Down

Hamza lay among them, facedown, a hole blown into his side. His right arm hung by the skin. White showed through his dangling right leg.

Khuzai ran home with him. "They said he was still alive," Khuzai said, and shook his head.

The oldest child killed was a 13-year-old with Down syndrome, residents of al-Khalij said. The youngest injured was a 4-day-old infant cut by flying glass, news reports said.

The children were among at least 1,500 Iraqi civilians killed by attacks since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's government took office April 28. But it was not Iraq's deadliest bombing of the week; a suicide bombing south of Baghdad on Saturday killed more than 100 Iraqis, mostly civilians, when it blew up a nearby fuel tanker.

In a 110-degree-plus summer in Baghdad, with wartime water and electricity shortages, gas lines again stretching from the pumps through neighborhoods and across the spans of highway overpasses, kidnappings, killings and bombings, and a government struggling to secure the country, the killing of 26 children quickly became al-Khalij's tragedy alone.

Hamza's father reflected on the silence, and recalled the July 7 bombings in London, which killed at least 56 people, including the bombers. "What happened in England drew condemnation from all the presidents and kings of the world. But when all our children here are gone, not even an Arab leader says a word," Khuzai lamented Monday. In the neighborhood, black funeral banners hung on front gates, sometimes two or more, for each dead child within.

Funerals for the children ended Sunday. Because of space limitations, families took turns putting up traditional funeral tents in the streets. Families marked each tent with name tags to help guide mourners to the right child's funeral.

Iraqi police stopped a Libyan in an explosives-rigged suicide vest as he walked toward one of the funerals Sunday, the U.S. military said. Officers subdued him before he could detonate the explosives.

Victims of last Wednesday's blast included brothers Abbas and Ali, brothers 7 and 9 years old born to a couple who had tried for 17 years to have children, neighbors said. Another boy, Jasem, died with a piece of candy and a key chain from the Americans still in one hand, residents said.

Two girls, like many Iraqi children this summer forbidden to play outside because of the danger, were killed when the bomb exploded on the street just outside, collapsing much of their house, residents said.

On Hamza's soccer team, only three boys survived, one because his father had taken him from the neighborhood on an errand, and another, Adil, because he slept in, residents said.

And there was Hamza himself, at 11 a solidly built boy who tried to pull his weight in the world.