The Man who is deserved highest Military Award

April 8, 2009, 4:36 pm
Visual Diary: Sadiq and the Nameless Baby
By Christoph Bangert
Iraq babyPhotos: Christoph Bangert for The New York Times
Photographer's Journal

BAGHDAD– Sadiq Khalaf al-Maliki and the unidentified baby boy who miraculously survived a car bombing.

Mr. Al-Maliki pulled the charred body of the child’s mother out of a burning car while another rescuer, Assad Raad al-Khafaji, took the baby. The mother of the baby as well as the driver of the taxi they were riding in died in the attack. No IDs were found.

A Moment of Heroism After a Blast in Baghdad
Christoph Bangert for The New York Times
BAGHDAD — Tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks as she held a baby boy, about 6 months old, rescued by her son from the wreckage of a car damaged by a bombing on Tuesday that killed eight people, apparently including the baby’s mother.
Umm Assad al-Khafaji fed a baby who was pulled from a car hit by a blast on Tuesday in Baghdad.

By SAM DAGHER
Published: April 7, 2009



Christoph Bangert for The New York Times

Eight people died at the scene, including a woman who was with the baby in the car.

The baby, whose tiny face was cut by glass shards, had yet to be claimed by anyone. The woman, Umm Assad al-Khafaji, whose son Assad Raad al-Khafaji had saved the baby, cleaned him up, dressed him in pajamas that belonged to one of her granddaughters and fed him milk from a bottle. The jean overalls he had worn hours earlier were stained with blood.

The baby smiled as he looked around the Khafajis’ living room.

For Mrs. Khafaji, the baby was a miracle and a gift from heaven. For people in the Nawab section of the Kadhimiya district in Baghdad, the Khafaji family and other neighbors were heroes. Their actions seemed to be proof that six years of numbing violence haven't dulled Iraqis' capacity for extraordinary acts of humanity.

“The victims are Iraqis — how can we not aid and defend them?” asked Sadiq Khalaf al-Maliki, 36, who had pulled the charred body of the woman presumed to be the baby’s mother from the burning white Peugeot sedan they were riding in.

Around noon on Tuesday, Mr. Maliki was on his way to fix his motorbike at one of the many repair shops that dot Nawab Street in Kadhimiya, the predominantly Shiite district in northwestern Baghdad that is home to a revered Shiite shrine.

Suddenly, a large explosion went off a few hundred yards from him. A car bomber had been waiting in line at a police checkpoint before abandoning his explosives-packed vehicle, according to a police colonel and witnesses. In addition to the eight dead, at least 20 people were wounded.

Ignoring the risk of a second bomb, Mr. Maliki rushed to aid the victims.

He said he saw the dead and injured everywhere, including an old woman sprawled on the median screaming: “I want Abbas. Where is my son?”

He then made his way to a Peugeot that was on fire. Inside he saw the driver slumped at the wheel, dead, and a folded stroller in the seat next to him.

In the back lay a woman’s charred body next to a colorful baby blanket.

Minutes earlier, Mr. Khafaji, who repairs motorbikes, had rushed to the same car, reached for the baby through an open window and taken him to his home nearby.

In that sense, the baby was luckier than others who had been wounded in the bombing. After Iraqi security forces arrived, they fired shots to disperse the crowd and scuffled with some of the rescuers, witnesses said, preventing many of the wounded from getting help. Order was restored when American troops arrived, witnesses said.

Issa Salim, a minivan driver, said lives could have been saved if it were not for the chaos that ensued. He said that he saw a man walk away from his car, bleeding, and that the man was dead by the time an ambulance reached him.

The Khafajis, meanwhile, called a number on the Peugeot driver’s cellphone and established that the man was not the baby’s father but a taxi driver hired by the woman.

They had none of the woman’s possessions to help them track down the baby’s family.

Mrs. Khafaji and her son, a burly and bearded 26-year-old, gazed at the oblivious baby in her arms and started crying.

“What future will this baby have without his mother?” she said.

“Many Iraqi children have been orphaned. Why?”