Tracing the Paths of 5 Who Died in a Storm of Gunfire

Blackwater's Convoy Enters the Square

Five months ago, a truck bomb detonated in the tunnel that runs beneath Nisoor Square. The repair work had become a metaphor for an Iraq capable of resurrecting itself. By Sept. 16, workers had painted pink and yellow flowers on the streets and draped Iraqi flags over railings. A white banner read: "Creators of Life are Always Victorious."

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On that day, the Blackwater convoy was responding to a bombing near a State Department convoy about a mile away. As the Blackwater armored vehicles entered the square, a heavily guarded area near Baghdad's affluent Mansour neighborhood, Iraqi police officers moved to stop traffic.

Kadhum, the doctor, and her son Haitham, who were in the flow of cars the officers were trying to stop, didn't react quickly enough. A Blackwater guard fired, striking Haitham as he sat in the driver's seat, three witnesses said.

"The bullet went through the windshield and split his head open," recalled traffic police officer Sarhan Thiab. "His mother was holding him, screaming for help."

The car, which had an automatic transmission, kept rolling. Another officer, Ali Khalaf, tried to stop the vehicle as another spray of bullets killed Kadhum.

Thiab fled first, then Khalaf, followed by bullets that struck a traffic light pole, a billboard and their police guard post. Then the Blackwater guards escalated their firepower, engulfing the sedan in flames.

In sworn statements to State Department investigators reported by ABC News, four Blackwater guards said they fired upon the sedan because it was traveling at high speed and would not stop. Khalaf and other eyewitnesses said it was moving slowly and posed no threat.

Within moments, bullets flew in every direction, said witnesses and police officials. Scores sought cover in a nearby embankment. Others abandoned their vehicles. "They were shooting from four cars," said Ahmed Ali Jassim, 19, a maintenance worker, referring to the Blackwater guards. "People were fleeing, but where could they go?"

Trapped in Traffic and Under Fire

Abbas, the car dealer, was in his stopped Volkswagen box truck, crouched next to his friend Majid Salman. Their vehicle was two cars behind and one lane over from the white sedan. The men had witnessed Kadhum and her son get shot, then burn as their car caught fire.

The night before, Abbas, a barrel-chested father of four, read the Koran as is traditional during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. That morning, he cracked jokes with his two young sons, Mohammed and Ahmed, they later recalled, before he left to send money to Dubai.

Now, Abbas and Salman were trapped in traffic as Western gunmen fired automatic weapons toward them roughly 25 yards in front of their truck. Within seconds, bullets punctured the black car in front of their truck. Gripped by fear, Salman, 48, pushed open the passenger-side door and stumbled out. He was immediately shot in the leg and abdomen, and fell to the pavement.

"Osama told me to get back in the car," Salman recalled. "I tried to climb back in, but I couldn't, so I crawled away on the ground."