Showing foreign media the evils of US bombardment is a hazardous undertaking that sometimes backfires. Lara Marlowe in Baghdad
When jet bombers flattened several blocks of the Mansour district of Baghdad on Wednesday, initial reports mentioned damage to the Red Crescent maternity hospital, said several people were believed killed, and implied that patients and doctors were among the wounded.
It later turned out that the hospital was evacuated two weeks ago because of its location. But the bombing occurred at 9.30 a.m. - a time when US planners knew there would be traffic in the streets. One motorist was killed and 10 others wounded.
The maternity hospital was obviously not a legitimate target, so attention shifted to the Syrian pavilion of the Baghdad International Fair, opposite and down the street. Twenty-four hours after the fact, the Information Ministry bused us to Mansour to see the destruction.
Sure enough, a sign saying "Syrian Arab Commercial Centre" had crashed to the ground outside the devastated fairground, which was used for a trade show every autumn. A dead sparrow lay on the pavement, among felled palms, girders and steel reinforcement rods.
There was a gaping hole in the ceiling, and the building next door pancaked onto thousands of 50 kg sacks of black tea. A strong scent of tea wafted from the wreckage, mixing with the odour of broken eucalyptus trees. Why had the US bombed a disused Syrian trade office? I briefly wondered if this was a warning: Washington accuses Damascus of providing night vision equipment for the Iraqi war effort.
The ministry "minders" tried in vain to herd camera crews diagonally across the street, towards the empty maternity hospital, which lost all its windows. But in the crowded boulevard, Iraqis walked up alongside us. "That was a big mokhabarat headquarters," one whispered to me, pointing to the moonscape beyond the Syrian pavilion. The earth was so churned up by explosions that there was little indication what had been there. It would have taken at least a one-tonne bomb to destroy it so completely. "They were using the fair buildings for storage," the informer added, before walking on.
The journalists sensed they were on to something, and made a bee-line for the huge crater and chunks of concrete - all that remained of the intelligence service building. Iraqi officials barred our path, shouting "entry to wreckage forbidden."
Usually we're allowed to wander freely over bomb sites, but this was an exception. There might be unexploded ordnance inside, one ventured. We were walking on cardboard folders - ah, the file folder, mainstay of every intelligence agency! I started to try to read them, but a grey-haired man standing on a pile of earth was screaming, "All journalists out! All journalists out!"
The ploy had failed. Did they really think we'd report an air raid on a disused trade fair and a maternity hospital, evacuated because of its undesirable neighbours? Bombing a busy neighbourhood in morning rush hour is an aberration, but the principal target was clearly a dark pillar of the regime.
