Hugh Sykes, photojournalism from Iraq.
Apologies to Hugh, these photos are not, as I mistakenly thought, related to his piece for Broadcasting House. In any case, as ever, they and Hugh's captions speak for themselves. Here are Hugh's words and pictures.
"On Thursday evening, the relative peace of Baghdad was shattered by two bombs and mass murder in the mixed city centre area of Karada. By coincidence, 24 hours earlier, I was at the street corner where they exploded.
Wednesday evening: It's a tranquil, mixed neighbourhood, where families amble and men gather in cafes like this one.
Karada's main street, seen from that café.
Men at the corner cafe, after I'd interviewed them - 24 hours before the bombs exploded.
Here - a merry policeman outside the café.
And this is the same street corner after the bombs. They exploded just over there, on the corner.
It's diagonally across the road from the café.
There were dozens of dead bodies on the ground, and severed limbs and hands.
68 people died, many of them teenagers and children.
120 were injured. The victims were Shia, Sunni, Kurdish and Christian.
The owner of a clothes shop knocks broken glass out of the window frame.
Glass outside a chemist's shop across the road from the bombs. The pharmacist was inside. He's ok, but he lost a lot of stock, which was blown onto the tiled floor. In the dark, on Friday evening, there were dozens of lighted candles arranged on the pavement to commemorate the dead. And on some of the locked shops, signs outlined in black announcing: "We regret we are closed - because of the death of the owner".
And those men at the café? They're still alive. But the son of one of them is not. He was walking past when the bombs exploded."
RSS feed
Email us
Listen to PM
