Word: baghdad
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...government, fearing more violence after the final, declared a ban on vehicle traffic beginning half an hour before Sunday's 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia. Daytime curfews aren't uncommon in Baghdad and Iraq's other large cities. But the streets were even more deserted than usual Sunday afternoon as Iraqis could not be pried from their TVs. Most fans, facing 120-degree temperatures and confined to their neighborhoods by the vehicle ban, watched at home or with friends. In poorer neighborhoods fans without televisions gathered at tea houses. Emptied of people, the streets were given over to stray...
...bearing the cynical attacks of car-bombs and terrorists, who had slaughtered more than 50 people who had rushed into the streets to celebrate after the country's soccer stars won a berth in the Asian Soccer Cup finals by beating 2006 World Cup semi-finalists South Korea. In Baghdad, people stocked up on gasoline for their generators (most of the capital gets only two hours of electricity per day and no one knows when the lights in their area will go out). Abu Ahmad, a taxi driver, described his preparations before the big game against Saudi Arabia: "I bought...
...When Baghdad was absolutely certain that Iraq had won the soccer championship against Saudi Arabia in faraway Jakarta, the celebrations began with a sustained blast of AK-47 fire. The happy sound could never be confused with a real gun-battle: few gun-battles, even in Iraq, are that fierce and sustained. Soon the popping of rifle fire was joined by the thudding sound of machine guns - the kind of heavy weapons bolted onto trucks or mounted on rooftops...
After the goal by striker Younis Mahmoud, the eventual game-winner, a few rounds of Kalashnikov fire popped off around Baghdad. and then when the win came, the sustained artillery fire. But perhaps in deference to pre-game government warnings that celebratory gunfire would not be tolerated, the shooting subsided much sooner than it did after the big semi-final victory over South Korea. There were other ways to celebrate. Fans clapped and sang and danced in the streets. Some set off fireworks. Boys went door to door giving away free orange juice to mark the victory. In one neighborhood...
White spoke from England several days after giving testimony in Washington before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. White said that he had to leave Iraq temporarily for the safety of his staff. Earlier this month White reported that he had received a warning by al-Qaeda in Baghdad in April that "those who cure you will kill you." He later realized that it may have been a reference to the abortive July 4 terror attacks in London and Glasgow where medical personnel, including doctors, were among those arrested...