I am sad to report the death of Ahmed the writer of the blog BlogIraq who was murdered in the Al-Mansour district of Baghdad. May he rest in peace. Iraqi bloggers are a close-knit community and we mourn the death of fellow bloggers as if it is from our own family. There is not one family in Iraq that has been untouched by the violence that gripped our country and Iraqi bloggers are no different. His friend, Mohammed Alani, who helped set up the blog, wrote on BlogIraq:

Ahmed (BlogIraq) is dead. He was killed in Baghdad on April 11th, 2008… He had an appointment that day with a guy he knew. This guy was supposed to get him some documents that prove corruption in some USAID office back in Baghdad. I don't have complete details about it. Anyway, he and the guy bringing the documents were killed at their meeting place in Mansour district in Baghdad… His brother in-law found him dead with his friend in Mansour district in one of the small streets there. Thank God his body was found, unlike many of our friends who were killed or just vanished without a trace. When I first setup this blog for him, he gave me the admin password of his blog and I gave him the password of mine. We agreed that whoever dies first, the other should write about it in his blog. Its just my bad luck that he died first. I can only think of his 20 months old daughter. Shes about the same age as my daughter, Aya. May God take revenge of those who killed him and orphaned his lovely daughter.

Abbas Hawazin adds: “I am feeling so much anger boiling, I tried to cry but I couldn't.”

If you read no other post this week read this one:

The media is increasingly making noises about how the modern world is creating a new environmental crisis. Yet scant attention is being paid to the environmental disaster that is befalling iraq as a result of five years of war. Last of Iraqis takes a look at all aspects of the crisis:

year after year it's getting hotter, I remember before the war and two years after it when I used to sit in my room the fan was enough… but in 2007… I remember when I got back to my house and opened the door, I swear to god it was like opening a door to hell although the house was left for only 36 hours without air cooling! … one can feel that the weather got crazy here, this year we were punished by the several sand storms and the swinging temperatures… Deterioration in agriculture was the reason behind the climate change as I think; people say that what used to be farms became a desert now in the south middle and west of Iraq and that's one of the main reasons behind the sand storms that we suffer from now because there are no trees and plants to hold the sand storms, Iraq is suffering and it's transforming, I know people are dying in Iraq and they can't be even counted but what will we inherit our children even if the situation improved and Iraq became free again and everything is settle? What will we inherit them? A destroyed land? A desert? a community filled with hatred?

Waiting for the war to come in Mosul

Empty streets in Mosul

by Mosul is in Heart

The Iraqi president, Nouri Al-Maliki has made a big noise about reclaiming the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Like the massive Basra offensive he moved to Mosul to personally direct the army. Iraqi bloggers give their impressions of a city about to be at war.

Najma is bored of being locked up at home because of endless curfews:

Hatred, such a strong unhealthy feeling.. but I just can't help but hate it here.. I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT.. I want to shout it at the top of my lungs so everybody can know that I just can't stand it here. The curfew that started at 9 PM last Friday was only temporarily stopped at 6 AM today and is going to start again at 6 PM until further notice.

And Sunshine writes about life in the war zone:

Everyone knows the new operation may starts in every sec , and the curfew may last for few weeks probably, so my dad bought every thing we need, rice , flour, eggs, cheese ,oil, meat , vegetables , fruit, etc. but there are many families can’t buy all those stuff , and live day by day, so when the national guards allowed the citizens to walk , many people started to do shopping, but this time, the prices were doubled or got higher 30-50% ..It breaks my heart to see my people living under hard circumstances, there are many issues need to be solved, like economy for example, and many other things, but who cares ?!!… On the third day … a fight started in far away neighborhood, dad immediately harried to carry Yosif inside , as soon as he carried Yosif a bullet hit the pavement where Yosif was standing !! I am so thankful it didn’t hit Yosif .. The situation today is not good, we heard many explosions and shooting.. and there were sounds of helicopters since the early morning, as well as many tanks

She concludes:

I really hope Mosul will be free of terrorists, I don’t mind spending 3 months stuck in the house, if there’ll be a happy end, we want to live in peace, we are tired of the continues fights, kidnapping, and killing. all Iraqis want their lives back, I want to go back to my room and sleep there, and I am eager to the day we’ll fix our house and be aware it won’t be damaged, whenever I look at our walls or my closet and see the bullets and shrapnel, my heart breaks, each damaged corner in the house has a painful story .. I want to be able to walk freely in the streets without being afraid of terrorists, many times I wonder, god created us all equally, and gave us mind to think , and feelings to sense, everyone like children because they are so innocents, why some of those children grew up and became evils ? why people fight each other ? I can’t understand that, why someone wake up in the morning and his attention is to kill ? I can’t understand the reason that motivate people to kill, sometimes they kill because of nationality!, religion!, race, some times I wish everyone can remain a child to keep the innocence!

And finally

Given the – for want of a better word – unique experiment of democracy in Iraq, where does the young intelligent Iraqi look to for a role model in a world leader? Marshmallow26 tells us: