Narrowly escaping Zarqawi's brutality

JERUSALEM, June 8 (Reuters) I never met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but he nearly killed me twice.

The first time was in Kerbala, a city south of Baghdad where Shi'ite Muslims gather each year to mark the death of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammad's grandson, 1300 years ago.

It was March 2, 2004, and Kerbala's narrow streets were packed with more than one million pilgrims, many of whom beat themselves with chains to recall Hussein's bloody demise.

It was the first time the ceremony, known as Ashura, had been freely marked in decades as Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, did not allow the open celebration of Shi'ite festivals.

That sense of religious freedom had greatly enhanced the fervour of the crowds and perhaps contributed to Zarqawi's desire to scar the ceremonies in the most extreme way possible.

At about 1030 am (Local time) a first explosion shook the city.

Unsure what had happened, myself and a Reuters cameraman ran to the site of the blast, dodging through a panicked throng of people as they dashed in the opposite direction.

A second explosion went off seconds later about 15 metres ahead of us. It tore through the crowd in front of us, scattering human remains in every direction, instantly killing perhaps 20 people and wounding dozens more.

The only reason we weren't struck down was because of the density of the masses around us. People just a few metres ahead were killed or maimed, left lying helpless in the street.

We turned to run and to our left another bomb detonated.

In all 120 people were killed in Kerbala that day as five bombs detonated across the city in a matter of minutes. Zarqawi later claimed responsibility.

At the time it was the deadliest attack by his group, but hundreds more were to follow, with suicide bombers targeting Iraqi security forces, American troops and civilians almost daily across the country in the past two years.

STRIKING ABROAD Eventually Zarqawi appeared to grow confident enough to export his violence.

In November last year, in the Jordanian capital Amman, I again came face-to-face with his brutal methods.

I was staying at the Hyatt hotel, the night before returning to Baghdad for another reporting stint, and was sitting down to dinner when a deafening blast shook the building.

On the floor above, a bomber strapped with explosives had blown himself up in the lobby, sending nails and ball bearings tearing through dozens of hotel guests and staff.

At almost exactly the same time, two other bombers detonated themselves at two other hotels, killing 60 people in all, and marking the deadliest attack by Zarqawi's group outside Iraq.

His death, in a US air strike near Baghdad yesterday, may have removed the mastermind behind such violence, but with an apparently endless supply of men willing to kill themselves for his cause, it's unlikely that deaths in his name have ended.

US President George W Bush lauded his death, but acknowledged that it was unlikely to end the sectarian bloodletting that Zarqawi intentionally unleashed in Iraq.

Reuters KD VV1955