More about Baghdad hotel bombing

Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Leila Fadel (see below) has written another first-person story about the bombing of the hotel where she and other journalists were staying. She writes:

We all lived, except for the man who made the cookies and pastries in the bakery.

Ali Abdul Salam walked to work as he always did that morning. But on Friday the white van, which breezed down a road that typically has an Iraqi police checkpoint, backed up to the blast wall as Ali walked up to an opening in the concrete. The blast took Ali and put smoke, fire and rubble in his place.

Maybe some of the burnt flesh that landed by the pool is his, or the foot in front of the hotel entrance or the arm found in the gym on the fifth floor. Or maybe they're the remnants of the bomber, who took his own life, Ali's and the lives of a little girl and her mother.

...

My employer, Knight Ridder, provides security for me as a Western journalist in Iraq. But Iraqis live each day on the dangerous roads of this capital city without the blast walls, guards and coiled concertina wire that protected me today.