EYEWITNESS: Hisham Danoon was still too frightened to step into the nether world of Abi Taleb Street, after two missiles launched by the US Air Force exploded here yesterday in late morning traffic.
"Four men died right here, in front of this building," Mr Danoon said, shrinking back into the dark entrance even as he nodded at the body parts the rescue workers had overlooked.
"That was my friend Tahar," he said, indicating a severed hand.
A boy tugged me by the arm and pointed to the viscous mound between two shards of corrugated steel roofing: Tahar's brain. Blood flowed down the chipped concrete steps into the sea of mud and broken glass below. Iraqi authorities said at least 15 people were killed in the busy Shiite Muslim ash-Shaab district of north-west Baghdad.
Inhabitants said they counted 27 dead, many of them burned beyond recognition. In the chaotic aftermath of the attack, I spoke to eyewitnesses of 11 civilian deaths. Amid the angry crowd, some waved shoes and clothing of the victims.
The British Air Force in Kuwait said: "The incident will be investigated". One Iraqi source said there was a military complex a half kilometre away.
The US pilot could not have seen his target in a sandstorm so thick that street lights and car headlights were on all day and men wrapped their faces in keffiyehs to be able to breathe.
So why did US airmen fire the missiles? Could they have been launched according to erroneous map co-ordinates? If so, civilians paid with their lives for the error, and hatred for the US invaders grew exponentially in ash-Shaab yesterday.
Mr Danoon, supervisor of the Nassiya al-Shemali apartments, was in his ground floor flat when he heard the jets overhead, and the missiles exploding. Recounting it two hours later, his eyes were glazed and he was visibly in shock. "I came out. They were cut into pieces," he said.
The other victims were Sermed, who ran the electrical shop to the right of the entrance, a beggar named Ahmed who dropped by often to ask for food, and the "boab" or building guard whose name Mr Danoon was too stunned to remember.
All three families living upstairs in Mr Danoon's building rushed wounded children to the Anouman or al-Kindi hospitals. A child's stuffed animal lay on the front seat of a crumpled red car with blown-out windows. "Property of God," declared a decorative blue plaque above the entry to Nassiya al-Shemali apartments.
"We did nothing. We are innocent. We are peaceful people. Why are they doing this to us?" Mr Danoon asked plaintively. "What does Bush want?"
Across the four-lane boulevard, at the gutted Nasser restaurant, two workers from another restaurant showed me where two employees named Abu Hassan and Malik Hammoud were killed as they prepared lunch. "How can the American people accept such things?" asked Mustafa Ali, holding up a metal panel covered in blood. "They say they want to help the Iraqi people, and they are attacking us."
Issam Majid saw the explosion from further down the boulevard, and ran towards his cousin Fares' car repair shop. "He was burned to death," Mr Majid said. "He had four children. Only God is with us; all the others are traitors."
Abi Taleb street is known for its car repair garages and spare parts shops. At least a dozen cars were crunched up like aluminium foil and hurled by the explosion. In one charred vehicle, eyewitnesses said, a mother and her three children died. Amid sirens and a massive traffic jam, several of the less damaged vehicles were towed away.
The crater in the central reservation was gouged out at an angle, its shallowness indicating a rocket or missile rather than a gravity bomb. Car engines, sheet metal riddled with shrapnel holes, plastic chairs, wire cables, were scattered over hundreds of square metres, making Abi Taleb Street look more like the site of an airline crash.
Later I realised that I heard the jet that carried out the air raid on ash-Shaab. About 11.30 a.m., in a small side street in A'Adhamiya, Iraqis ran for cover when they heard the aircraft. Two nights before, a similar attack destroyed four of their houses. Eight civilians, five from the Chekli family, three from their neighbours over the back wall, the Antimimis, were killed in that bombing. Ahmed Chekli, age 10, enrolled in his fourth year at the Intifada School around the corner, died in Anouman Hospital yesterday morning.
Some residents of A'Adhamiya interpreted the attack on them as revenge for the resistance encountered by US and British invasion forces in the south. "When we saw that they were having no success on the front, all of us said they would attack civilians, to make trouble inside Iraq," said a neighbour of the Cheklis.
The invaders "cannot succeed", he predicted, "because people know the real reasons for this war: oil and Israel. Time is on our side, because the Americans and British don't have the will to keep fighting."
Civilian casualties like those in ash-Shaab and A'Adhamiya are worsening what an Iraqi journalist called "the trust problem". Faith in the Bush administration was low because of broken promises to overthrow the regime 12 years ago. Press reports that later proved to be exaggerated or untrue - of the taking of Umm Qasr, Basra and Nassiriya - further devalued the word of the invaders. Now civilian casualties are mounting.