The bearded militiaman knelt in the rain and used his gun to shift the earth of the bomb crater. "There is a hand still here in the ground," said Wasim al-Shinmari. "I can't touch it. I'm sorry, but I just can't touch it."
He exposed what looked like a pale lump of human flesh against the dirt, and then dissolved in sobs. "The bodies went to hospital, but the hand is here," he said.
Around him a small circle of men shouted: haram, haram (abomination). But it was unclear whether they meant the unburied human remains, or the audacity of America's bloody attack on an otherwise unremarkable suburb of Baghdad.
At least 14 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured on Wednesday morning when two American bombs fell out of the sky, and on to a crowded marketplace. If this was the result of precision bombing, as US and British military commanders said last night, then it wasn't precise enough.
"I saw a dozen bodies or more. They were inside the cars, outside the cars, even in the buildings," Shinmari said. "Children, ladies, men ... nobody had any warning."
It was the single worst act of carnage in six days of an American aerial assault on the Iraqi capital carried out by B-52 bombers, F-17 jet fighters and cruise missiles, at all hours of the day.
And, as Wednesday's marketplace slaughter so clearly demonstrates, increasingly the targets are on the edges of residential areas, far away from the lavish palaces and military installations that are the institutional heart of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime.
The people of the Shaab neighborhood, on the northern perimeters of Baghdad, never had an inkling they would be next.
Iraqis had learned to adapt to the rhythm of the bombs, venturing out if they had to, by daytime largely, and with great caution to avoid official areas known to be the target of America's wrath.
The main Ali Benabi Talib artery carried a reasonably heavy flow of traffic. The small garages and grocery shops that line the eastern side of the road were open for custom; the residents of the flats on the western side were at home.
Nobody paid much attention to the roar of the planes overhead; it was the third or fourth sortie since daybreak.
"I heard the bombing attacks all morning long, but they were relatively far away," said Abdel Razak.
"I certainly didn't expect anything here. This is a civilian area," Razak said.
That false sense of security in US technology and its precision-guided bombs, was abetted by the weather, an orange apocalyptic haze that engulfed the city.
For once, no Baghdadi grumbled about the freak sandstorm -- the worst in more than 10 years -- and the thick coating of dust that surrounded them.
They saw the orange sky as an omen, or a curse -- certainly not against Iraq, which in their belief had never wanted this war, but on the American and British enemies who were invading their land.
At 11:30 Wednesday morning, they were brutally disillusioned.
The relatively small size of the craters, one on either side of the main road, gave little indication of the bombs' lethal force.
When they exploded, within seconds of each other, two men from the district, Tahir, 26, and Sarmat, 21, were idling away the day in a small shop that sells water heaters. In an instant the shop gave way, swallowing up the two men.
The sideways force of the blast spewed chunks of masonry and body parts across a six-lane highway. Sizzling chunks of shrapnel tore through plaster facades, leaving pockmarks on the interior wall.
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