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IRAQ: U.S. soldiers save a dying Iraqi policeman

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This is the story of a high-ranking Iraqi police officer who was recently shot seven times outside his home in the Hurriya neighborhood of Baghdad.

He was saved by American soldiers and doctors. Because of danger to his family, the officer asked to be identified only as Sajad. These are his words:

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‘My wife went to see who was knocking at the door. She does that as a precaution because there might be a bad guy there. Our neighborhood is not completely safe. There are bad elements who might wish to hurt a senior police officer.

‘ ‘Who’s there?’ my wife asked.

‘ ‘Me,’ came the reply.

‘It was a boy who answered her. She knew him from his voice, she had talked to him before, so she felt safe. She opened the door and she saw a 16-year-old boy standing there. He asked to talk to her husband, and she said, ‘He is breaking his fast, come another time.’

‘The boy insisted. I went to the door. My 6-year-old daughter was with me; she was following me. When I went outside the house, more than five young men came from two sides holding pistols.

‘They started shooting me. I tried to enter the house, pulling my little girl by her hand. The assassins ran away. I was yelling, ‘Give me my gun. I will kill them.’ I didn’t recognize that I was injured. When I reached the kitchen, I fell to the floor. Blood was covering me. My body had seven wounds, in my belly, chest and hands.’

Sajad was taken to Kademiya hospital. Iraqis doctors were working on him.

‘Then an American officer came in and said, ‘Stop everything. We will take him from here.’

‘I was awake and I was in pain. He told me that he would take me to an American helicopter waiting for us. It was dark. There were many American soldiers inside the helicopter. I closed my eyes, then I opened them to see myself inside the helicopter. Everything was blurred. But I just recognized the one face of the old man. He was a senior American officer. He ordered the people around me to start [working on me]. The soldiers or the doctors started [taking] the bullets out of my body. I was looking at their lancets and strange tools, slicing me and penetrating me. I was amazed how fast they were operating.

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‘The old man came to me and said, ‘Are you the Iraqi officer?’

‘ ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘ ‘You are a great man,’ he said.

‘After a while, we reached to the Green Zone at the American hospital in Baghdad. ... I was saved. They pulled seven bullets out of me and fixed the wound near my heart.

‘At the hospital the old American officer ordered the nurses to give me special treatment, and he always called me ‘the great man.’

‘I’m recovering now. but the Iraqi hospitals lack the experience and the equipment to treat my condition. I went back to the American base, and they saved my life again.’

— Usama Redha in Baghdad

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