IRAQ: There was blood and anger in equal measures across Baghdad yesterday in one of the most violent days in the country since the end of the war.
Four suicide bombers struck within an hour of each other, targeting the International Committee of the Red Cross and three police stations. Throughout the morning, bombs and sporadic gunfire rocked the city.
At the Red Cross headquarters in central Baghdad, hit at 8.35 a.m., in the middle of rush hour, blackened remains of the ambulance used in the attack smouldered amid the wreckage of other vehicles caught in the blast.
American tanks and humvees could do little to disguise the devastation wrought when a suicide bomber parked his vehicle outside the building and pressed the detonation trigger as a security guard approached.
The explosion, which killed 12 people, scattered vehicle parts hundreds of metres away, knocked down the defensive barriers around the headquarters along with sections of a surrounding wall, and apparently struck a water pipe, causing flooding on the street.
The inside of the building was heavily damaged, littered with shattered glass, doors blown off their hinges, toppled bookcases and collapsed ceilings.
"There were bodies everywhere," said Mr Abdul Mustafa, one International Committee Red Cross member who was inside the building when the bomber struck. He struggled to stem bleeding from his nose where a piece of flying glass had hit him.
"I had just arrived for my shift when the bomb went off. I was thrown through a door and knocked unconscious. When I came round I went outside. The guard who approached the bomber lay in a pool of blood. He died in my arms."
Mr Saleh Hadi, whose house is opposite the headquarters, said: "When I ran out onto the street there were clouds of black smoke and people screaming. Guards from the ICRC were shooting at the wreckage but it was too late by then."
At the Baya police station, hit minutes before the Red Cross, to the west of Baghdad, a man driving a pick-up truck and describing himself as a construction worker gained access to the compound before detonating his explosive-laden vehicle.
The station, used for joint US and Iraqi patrols, was opened only a few weeks before. Fresh paint-work were shredded by shrapnel from the blast. Other vehicles in the compound were flattened by the explosion, which left a nine-foot deep crater.
At the Khadra police station witnesses described how a pick-up truck drove at high speed into crash barriers outside the compound before his vehicle exploded, removing the front section of the building but leaving most of the policemen inside uninjured.
Passers-by caught in rush-hour traffic in front of the station were less fortunate. One woman and her son were killed and dozens injured. Witnesses described how bodies lay across the road with their clothes removed by the force of the explosion.
An old man who had a leg blown off in the explosion was still conscious enough to ask that his wife be informed about what had happened to him as he was led away in an ambulance.
Mr Taha al-Khadra, who helped remove the injured said, "The policemen were laughing and praising God that they were still alive. Everyone else was screaming."
An hour after the attack, US soldiers sealed off the area amid fears of another attack. "Make no mistake about it, this is chaos," said one.
An investigation was launched to try and piece together who was behind the attack, although there was precious little to work on, other than the account of an Iraqi policeman that the attacker had a large beard.
Col Todd Harrison, of the 168th Military Police Battalion, said: "The terrorists are getting more brave and bold. They're seeing the progress that's being made in the country and are determined to try and stop that.
"It's hard to defend against suicide bomb attacks. But as we're seeing the techniques they use, we're developing new methods to combat them. We have the support of the Iraqi people in the work we are doing."
But at the Shaab police station, after it was struck in the days' third bomb attack, there was little sign of support for US troops. Angry crowds gathered to denounce the American presence in Iraq at the blast site's security cordon.
One man pulled off his shirt and beat his chest before the rolls of barbed wire, calling, "Kill Americans, Kill Americans." It later transpired the man's brother was being detained in the police station when the suicide bomber struck, and was feared dead.
In the wreckage of his shop less than 200 yards away from where bomber drove into a crash barrier, one Iraqi merchant cursed the nervous-looking US soldiers on guard nearby. "I've just lost everything I owned. These bombings never used to happen under Saddam. It's been a terrible morning but I think there will be many more like this to come," he said.