Eyewitnesses describe chlorine bomb attack in Anbar

posted at 10:20 pm on March 26, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Iraqi police caught one of these rat bastards over the weekend trying blow up his truck. When they checked the back, they found two-plus tons of explosives and five 1,000-gallon drums of chlorine.

Some people aren’t so lucky. Ten days ago; Albuaifan, south of Fallujah:

The heavy, poisonous gas sank near the ground and seeped into the garden of Irsan Majid Alisawy, where a dozen children were playing.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Alisawy recalled Monday. “I wanted to open my mouth but there was no air.”

It was even worse for the children, who quickly passed out.

“We were terrified,” Alisawy said.

At least eight people have died from the attack. Two of Alisawy’s nieces lingered at the U.S.-run Ibn Seena Hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone until Sunday, when they succumbed to burns to their lungs. One was 8, the other 2.

Alisawy’s 18-month-old son remained hospitalized, breathing through an oxygen mask. Tubes snaked from his body. A blanket decorated with turtles covered him.

Another niece, Malak – “Angel” in Arabic – gasped for air through a ventilator tube in her nose and sipped from a juice box that her uncle offered. Malak, 3, doesn’t know that her parents are dead.

Ferial, Malak’s 14-year-old cousin, also lost both her parents and a sister; the sister was one of the girls who died Sunday.

Ferial stopped going to school a year ago because of al-Qaida kidnappings and killings. On Monday, she rasped, “I’m fine,” as her chest heaved with every word.

Their crime was living in a town whose tribal leaders refused to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq.

We rolled up a major car bomb network in Baghdad today, meanwhile. Estimated number of murders perpetrated by this one cell: 900.

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