Salam Dawood sat in his car on Tuesday stuck in traffic. Nearby a mother and her two sons shuffled among the vehicles, begging stranded motorists for spare cash.
Suddenly, a roadside bomb exploded. When the smoke cleared, Dawood and another man were dead. The mother, her two sons and five others were wounded, police and hospital officials said.
The toll was small by Baghdad standards. The attack became just another statistic, soon forgotten in the drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, murders and death squad massacres that have inured the world to the suffering of the Iraqis.
Baghdad is safer today than at any time in the last four years, and the bustling streets attest to security improvements that would have been unthinkable only a year ago.
But the US military warns consistently that the security gains, though dramatic, are not irreversible and that the relative calm is fragile.
Even though violence is down, small scale bombings and shootings persist — an ominous reminder that the war is not over. For victims, the pain of injury or the loss of a loved one is no less intense than if two died — or 200.
Iraqis remain cautious. Most won’t drive at night. Many try to avoid heavily clogged streets, remembering that suicide bombers intent on killing large numbers of civilians favor traffic jams or congested areas.
But no precaution is foolproof, and death sometimes means being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Dawood was just 3km away from his office in central Baghdad’s Khilani Square, where he worked as a civil engineer, when the bomb exploded. It was hidden beneath a pedestrian bridge near a police post, although it was unclear whether that was the target.
The blast killed him and Hameed Miziel, a 37-year-old laborer, officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to the media.
The mother, who gave her name only as “Umm Mohammed” or “mother of Mohammed,” said she chose to beg in that area — a busy intersection lined with car and generator repair shops — because she thought it was safe.
“I used to beg in different areas, but recently I came to this intersection because I thought it was safe there. Thank God, my injury and my sons’ were not serious,” the 36-year-old widow said from the hospital where she was treated for a leg wound.
In Baghdad, however, safe is a relative term.
US and Iraqi officials do not routinely release figures on the number of bombs that explode each month in Baghdad, citing security.
Iraqi police, however, said that at least five small bombs explode on average each month near the intersection on the eastern side of the Tigris River.
Less than two weeks ago, a pair of bombs exploded almost simultaneously near the same intersection, killing three civilians.
Nevertheless, attacks throughout Iraq are at their lowest levels in four years, the US military said.
Last month was one of the least deadly months since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Still, at least 360 civilians were killed and more than 470 wounded in violence throughout the country, an Associated Press count showed.
In comparison, nearly five times as many civilians died violently during the same month last year, the AP tally showed.
Much of the credit for the drop in violence is attributable to the US troop buildup last year, a ceasefire by the main Shiite militia and a Sunni Arab revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq.
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