Christian has been in Baghdad with Scott Fleming who published the story of this attack here as a slash US scoop last week.

As you know Baghdad is hell on earth, but we were only there for two weeks. Perhaps the craziest thing that happened to us was getting the middle of that massive fire fight in Baghdad on august 7th-- we were the first press on the scene and were just behind the US troop’s position for the whole fight. This is what happened.


We were coming back from an interview around 1 pm and were going to make a call at the Al Hambra. Once there we found the place totally vacated of press and the brassy old cig smoking Iraqi broad who controls the phone told me that the embassy had blown up. I tell the boys (G, Scott and Ahmed) and naturally we saddle up to rush down for a look, not expecting to see much as the event was many hours old.


As we pull out on to the main drag we notice smoke in the rearview, think black smoke just coming up from the street somewhere behind us about a mile away, the first sings black smoke rising in the sky.


Is that a trash fire? No. So, we looped back. The blocks here are either old and small or long and new; the layout is like LA. At the end of a long, split-lane thorough fare block all the cars are stopped and turning off, we proceeded then pull over and bail out on foot.


From that distance all we can see is smoke and a few military vehicles. The sun is bright, hot as fuck and the air is, as usual in this town, thick and hazy. We walk quickly toward the scene, down the street; the vehicles are about 300 yards away. Iraqi men line the street, clustered outside their electronic shops most of which are in two and three story buildings.


The scene is quiet except for a few of the local men shouting out to us in Arabic and English: ‘be careful’. We move to the sidewalk. A car with two UK Journos pulls up beside us, they bail out and the six of us walk along the street’s left sidewalk, its hard to see what is going on because the sidewalks are packed with refrigerators and air conditioning boxes. Finally we get close enough, crouch and really see the scene.


About 50 yards away is a transport truck, beyond that a humvee and just beyond that on the median are the totally destroyed, flaming and smoke billowing remains of another humvee. A few US soldiers are crouched by the humvee and behind them are about four more crouched and standing behind the transport truck. They are totally still: no firing, no yelling, or talking on the radio, not even looking around. But everyone of them is looking in a different direction, scanning the street behind them, the sidewalk, the roofs, the scene ahead. There are no reinforcements, no choppers and no one is saying anything. Its 2:15 hot a hell and the whole place is totally silent except for the wush of flames and smoke billowing up.


We crouch behind boxes and wait for something to happen. And then: bam-bam-bam! All the ammo in the burning humvees starts to explode. A first it’s a dozen rounds and we’re down behind a car. Then more rounds blow and we bail the fuck off to the sidewalk. Now we’re lying in the doorways of electronic stores. And then shit hits the fan, hundreds of rounds just blowing up randomly.


After that, all is silent. Garret is filming and Ahmed is on the shotgun mic, Scott and I are shooting stills. Ahmed and G cross to the right side of the street for better view and cover. Then Scott and I cross, walking -- not running -- to making it clear that we’re civilian journalists in blue shirts with big-ass straw hats on; we all take up a position in front of an electronic store and wait.


A few minutes later some Bradley fight vehicles and APCs show up and they unload squads of around nine solider each. The Joes take up position just to our left and down along the other side of the street. Its clear we’re now facing the target at an angle.


Now the shit begins. At first its just ‘ping, ping’ then its massive, aggressive, sustained burst of cover fire with more US troops leap frogging from vehicle to vehicle. The first of two other journos, the hardcore war-photo folks, show up in their vests, join us and then one moves to the center of the street to snap close ups of the troops. Now, more firing, from M16s and the bigger 30 caliber guns on the Bradleys but not their 50 cal cannons yet. The target is a three story office building just across from the engulfed humvee. More burst of American fire, and suddenly crack crack -- some return fire. Ahmed, excited and nervous, says ‘that’s Klashnikov’, I know the voice. ‘That’s Klashnikov.’ There is a clear national pride in his tone, never mind that we are almost at the most forward US troop position and being shot at.


More firing, on and on, stopping, starting but always heavy. During one of the exchanges we hear a few long, sharp hot zzzick, zzzick the unmistakable sound of bullets headed our direction pacing close by. A few closer rounds make cracking sound. Only latter do we realize that’s the dangerous shit. It didn’t matter either way, during the bursts we were crouching behind what ever we could.


Scott and I are ducking in and out of the depths of the store, but G-rock is trying to catch it all on film. Crazy. With us at the door two real sweat Iraqi guys are inside the shop, the proprietors they give us water and we chat with them saying, shukron, shukron (thank you) and war, bad.


From a side street more Bradleys have approached and they start pounding the building with 50 cal round, cannon shells. More troops and journos are moving up so we do the same, it part realizing that the stone wall just ahead will be better cover than the refrigerators there is less, if any, discernible return fire. And so it goes for another forty five minutes, creeping closer and close, journos hiding and moving together sharing water, troops getting thick on the ground, over taking, firing and moving up ever more confident. The reinforcements are all 82nd airborne and first armored MPs (aka, the First AD). Iraqi shop keepers are watching from the sides. Occasionally troops tell them to get back. It all lasts about two hours.


By the end as troops were pulling back we help an Iraqi guy get his car away from the flames. And comfort another dude whose shop was burnt. That night at dusk we headed back and do some more interviews. The key point was laid out by an old man: US troops thought Karada Street was safe, they bought lots of electronics and cd’s there, particularly bootleg porn. The old man explained how much people hated this, the sale of dirty movies, and how even good Muslims were forced by poverty into Karada. He said it was clear this was going to happen sooner or later. Also, contrary to some press reports, we determined that what wasted the humvee, as it parked and its crew went to buy skin flicks, was not an RPG but a remotely detonated device buried in what had once been a square plant patch. That’s how they hide bombs ‘in concrete’ around here, by digging into planters and old tree patches.


>As for dead and wounded the hajjis said two US troop were killed: the Humvee gunner cut in half and the driver simply disappeared in the massive blast. The US authorities released no press release or casualty estimates. But informally all agree that at least one GI, the passenger lost his leg. We saw him taken out at the end of the fight. As for Iraqi dead, it seems from our investigations and from al jazera that three men and one woman by stander died. It’s not clear whether the men were local shopkeepers or gunners. Miraculously over thirty civilians survived the fight and the ensuing fire. It was awful and insane but also quite a rush.