Christian Peacemaker Teams
15 November 2004

Sunday, November 7
A neighbor visited last evening and reported on the big explosion just down Karrada St from the CPT apartment. The attack targeted the Minister of Finance; a guard was killed.

Monday, November 8
Matthew Chandler departed for team work in Amman on what turned out to be the last flight out of Baghdad International Airport for one week. An explosion at the checkpoint into the airport delayed the flight.

Sheila Provencher and Cliff Kindy visited Msgr. Faloni, the ambassador of the Vatican to Iraq. He shared that the situation for Christians in Mosul is worsening, causing many to leave Iraq.

Provencher and Kindy went for blood tests as one detail of visa extension. Surprisingly, nine foreigners had been there earlier in the morning. The team had thought they were a rather unique foreign presence in Iraq.

Electricity was very erratic throughout the day.

Sheila Provencher
Christian Peacemaker Teams
10 November 2004

Somewhere, someone was playing a flute. The melody drifted down the stairacase.

Fr. Yousif Thomas, an Iraqi Roman Catholic priest, led me into the library of the Dominican friars in Baghdad. “See?” he pointed at the ceiling. A cross, made up of wooden panels and mirrors, faced down into the room. Next he led me outside. “Now, see?” he pointed to the courtyard floor. Another cross of the same design was molded into the tiles. “This is to remind us that the cross is down here, with us. The cross is in the mud. Even while it is also over us.”

Fighter jets roared overhead and broke the evening music.

“Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya.”

By Dahr Jamail in Baghdad
15 November 2004

It never fails to get my adrenaline flowing when my hotel rumbles from a car bomb detonating in central Baghdad.

Last night around 7pm the explosion occurred at a hotel compound which houses foreign contractors over near Firdos Square.

Shortly there after the “Green Zone” took a sustained mortar attack which went on long enough for them to hit the blaring sirens which warn the inhabitants to take cover, long after the mortar rounds had stopped falling.

Iraq’s borders with Syria and Jordan remain closed, according to US-appointed prime minister Allawi since declaring Iraq in a state of “national emergency.”

By Dahr Jamail in Baghdad
15 November 2004

BAGHDAD, Nov 15 (IPS) - Everyone saw it coming, only the U.S. forces did not: humanitarian disaster in Fallujah, and stronger resistance against U.S. and allied occupying forces all around Iraq.

The real face of the ’success’ of the U.S. military assault in Fallujah is now beginning to present itself. Thousands of families remain trapped inside Fallujah with no food, clean water or medical assistance.

No one can say how many of the 1,200 ‘rebels’ U.S. forces claim to have killed inside Fallujah are civilians, or whether the death toll is higher.