Independent Online Edition > Iraq: A nation where suicide bombing is a fact of life

Independent Online Edition > Middle East: "The favourite time for suicide bombers to strike is about nine in the morning. There is the crash of a distant explosion and the windows of my hotel room rattle in their frames. Sometimes, I go to the roof and see oily black smoke rising above the palm trees somewhere in Baghdad. No city in the world has suffered so frequently from suicide bombers. Four bombs detonated in London, but this is becoming an everyday ocurrence in Baghdad.
Last Friday, there were no fewer than 12 attacks killing at least 28 people. The studied cruelty of the bombers gets worse by the day. Last week, a man driving a car packed with explosives blew himself up beside a US Army Humvee and killed at least 18 children playing in the street. A distraught man called Qais who was mourning his children said: 'I have had to move from my home because I cannot bear to look at the place where my two sons - Ali was five and Abbas was six - were playing before they died.' "