BAGHDAD -- The two men stood on opposite sides of the street, both angry and shaken by what had just happened.

On the south side stood Raad al-Na'amee, a former officer in the Iraqi army. His brightly checkered shirt was covered in blood, his unshaven face flushed with anger.

“This is the blood of my friend,” he hissed, tugging at his red-stained sleeve and glaring across the street at U.S. troops crouched behind barbed wire and sandbags in the heart of Baghdad.

A few hours before, Mr. al-Na'amee and his friend, Mohammed al-Iraqi, had been demonstrating with hundreds of other former Iraqi army soldiers in front of the headquarters of Iraq's new U.S.-installed administration, demanding they be compensated for having their jobs taken away. Now he believed Mr. al-Iraqi and at least one other demonstrator were dead.

“This is freedom and democracy?” Mr. al-Na'amee tried to shout, his voice hoarse from a day of high-volume use. Frustrated, he kicked uselessly at the sidewalk.

Across an intersection, behind the barbed wire and the sandbags, U.S. First Sergeant Alec Lazore wasn't quite sure what had gone wrong.
As the officer in charge of gate security at the entrance to the former presidential palace now inhabited by the Office of the Civilian Provisional Authority, he, with his troops, had seen many, many such demonstrations in the two months since the fall of Baghdad. Not once before had they opened fire on a crowd.

But this demonstration was angrier and more violent than previous protests. One of Baghdad's slew of new morning newspapers had said the Americans would give $50 to every Iraqi soldier who had been laid off when the armed service was disbanded last month, putting about 400,000 people out of work.

The crowd wasn't unduly large — perhaps 1,000 people at its height, Sgt. Lazore estimated — but the fury that swept through it when they found out there would be no payment that day alarmed the Americans. Everyone grew tense.

“This is the third time they — the ex-soldiers — came here to demonstrate, and they were 100-per-cent more aggressive this time around,” Sgt. Lazore said, his finger on the trigger of his M-16 several hours after the incident, his eyes warily watching the small crowd of protesters — including Mr. al-Na'amee — still gathered on the sidewalk opposite.

The U.S. soldier and former Iraqi officer agree on the basic facts of the incident. An initial crowd of perhaps 400 people looking for their payment gathered outside the OCPA gate early yesterday morning. When it became clear they would not get their money, they became angry, and apparently gained courage as hundreds of other protesters flocked to the intersection to join them.

The scene became violent. A Reuters television team was attacked, and one of the cameramen was taken to hospital after being struck with a piece of metal cable. A United Nations vehicle was also attacked, and some of the demonstrators began pushing themselves into the curled barbed wire in front of the U.S. positions.

Sgt. Lazore ordered his troops to fix bayonets, a threatening gesture that he said usually persuades an angry crowd to back off a few steps. This time, however, some of the Iraqi men simply tore off their shirts, as if daring the Americans to knife them. They continued to push forward.

“It was very, very tense. It was a full-court press,” Sgt. Lazore recalled. It was also scorching hot. The mercury hit a high of 45 yesterday in central Baghdad, fraying nerves and fuelling tempers.
Into this edgy atmosphere drove a Humvee jeep, returning from a patrol through the neighbourhoods nearby. The driver tried to push his way through to the OCPA gate, but was stopped abruptly in the middle of the intersection outside. The crowd converged, and began to angrily pound on the jeep, some using bricks and stones. Sgt. Lazore's men fired warning shots over the heads of the crowd, some of the bullets thudding into a telephone pole and electrical box across the street.

Here the two versions, Iraqi and U.S., dramatically break. The only matter of agreement is that the gunner on top of the Humvee opened fire on the crowd, killing two Iraqis and wounding another.
Sgt. Lazore said the soldier, whose name was not released yesterday, believed the Iraqis were shooting at him. The soldier told Sgt. Lazore that he saw two muzzle flashes, and responded by pumping four rounds into the crowd. Three Iraqis, all former army conscripts, fell.

Mr. al-Na'amee said no shots were fired from the Iraqi side. “We don't have any guns. We don't have any weapons. People were throwing stones and the Americans just started shooting at us.”
Mr. al-Iraqi was hit in the back below his right shoulder blade as he turned to run from the scene, Mr. al-Na'amee said. He and some of the other demonstrators tried to pull their wounded friend away to get him to a hospital, but the U.S. soldiers quickly came out and took the three shooting victims inside the gate, where mobile operating theatres were set up. Sgt. Lazore said one — he's not sure which was Mr. al-Iraqi — died almost immediately, the other on the operating table. The third was still being treated yesterday evening.
“I'm sorry this happened because this was democracy in action and it's their right to protest,” Sgt. Lazore said.

It wasn't the only setback yesterday in Baghdad, a city still trying to find its balance two dizzying months after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled and the U.S. military took its place. As Sgt. Lazore retold his version of the morning's events, more news came in: one U.S. soldier had been killed and another injured in a drive-by shooting a few blocks away. This was the 51st American soldier killed since the formal war here ended May 1.

Sgt. Lazore interrupted his conversation to catch up to the commander of a foot patrol about to leave the base. He passed on the grim news. “Be safe out there,” he said to the nodding soldier.
Across the street, Mr. al-Na'amee and his friends stood, their eyes glowing with hatred.

The Globe and Mail; 19 June 2003