Word: ak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...drive past, I can hear a gun battle somewhere--the deep rumble of U.S. military M-16s and the higher-pitch clatter of AK-47s. The gunfire is a momentary distraction for Wisam, my driver, who is telling me about yesterday's atrocity--66 people killed when a suicide bomber detonated himself in a crowded market in the Shi'ite neighborhood of Sadr City. Last year that giant slum was the safest district in Baghdad. Now I mentally add it to the list of neighborhoods I can enter only at great risk...
...walls), the sporadic spurts of violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis have given way to a steady stream of blood. Partisans on both sides are arming themselves for battle, and ordinary folks are looking for ways to defend themselves. Owing to soaring demand, the price of a Chinese-made AK-47 has quadrupled, to $200, since the start of the year; the Russian-made version has doubled, to $600. The U.N. reports that nearly 6,000 Iraqis were killed in May and June, more than in any comparable period since the fall of Saddam. These days, almost all the killing...
...soccer World Cup was a welcome distraction. Since Iraq didn't qualify, people invested their emotions in foreign teams, like Brazil and Italy. When the Italians won the tournament, it was our driver Wisam--not our Milanese photographer, Franco Pagetti--who had to be restrained from shooting an AK-47 into the air, the traditional Arab celebration. But even the enjoyment of a faraway sporting event can be poisoned by sectarian suspicions: a Sunni neighbor asked me, with a knowing smirk, whether our Shi'ite staff members had supported the Iranian team. When I said no, he was surprised. Many...
They scuttled everywhere, a hundred, two hundred, more. They flowed from the doors and windows and swarmed along the rooftops and into the street, and the AK-47s bucked in their hands as they fired on full-automatic at the slow-moving trucks. The Iraqis, most of them in loose-fitting, soiled civilian clothes, did not seem to aim at all, but to just shoot and scream and shoot. They sprayed bullets at the convoy and waited for the Americans to drive into their own death...
...Chaos," Jessi said. "It was like being in a bad dream. You just want to wake up and have everything back like it was. But you can't wake up." Jessi remembers dark, bearded faces and words she could not understand, and the clattering sound of the AK-47 and the deafening crack of the American assault rifles in the cab of the humvee as Dowdy, Sergeant George Buggs and Specialist Edward Anguiano returned fire...