Sabreen Saad's fiance killed an hour before engagement party

BAGHDAD, Aug 5: Sabreen Saad never had time to grieve after a car bomb killed her fiance an hour before their engagement party.

She died two days later from wounds sustained in the same blast.

Shi'ite labourer Hussein al-Ameri, 25, had just picked up his 16-year-old fiancee and her sister at the hairdresser and were about to head for the cake shop.

A few seconds later the bomb exploded, sending shrapnel flying in all directions as mortar bombs landed nearby, killing at least 27 people and wounding 101 people in one of the capital's less dangerous districts two weeks ago.

Like so many other blasts, the bomb on Karrada street in central Baghdad claimed civilian lives indiscriminately.

There was no obvious target for the attack, although the capital is gripped by sectarian and insurgent shootings and bombings that kill dozens every day.

The young couple met the fate of so many other Iraqis who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The explosion didn't end a long love story. Like many others in conservative Iraq, their marriage would have been arranged.

But it still felt special for Sabreen, whose sister is still in hospital with serious wounds from the explosion and who lost a brother to a mortar bomb attack last year.

''A week before (the engagement), the bride dreamed that a guy named Hussein would come to ask for her hand, and he did,'' said Ni'ima Farajallah, the relative who introduced them.

''I still imagine that Hussein is in front of me,'' Hassan al-Ameri, Hussein's father, said, sitting in a bedroom in his home that he had set aside for the couple.

The beige suit and pink dress the couple had planned to wear at the party were still laid out on the double bed. A large framed picture of Hussein lay between the outfits. It was enscribed with the phrase ''happy martyr''.

Gold jewellery, cosmetics and other gifts that Hussein had planned to give Sabreen lay untouched on the dresser.

In Iraq, families of young men who die before getting married treat their funeral as if it was their wedding day, hiring a small band to play joyful music.

''I didn't want them to play sad music. I danced as if it was his wedding day,'' said Hussein's father, who buried his son the same day he had been due to celebrate his upcoming wedding.

The following week another bomb claimed 10 new victims in the same spot as the one that turned Hussein and Sabreen's special day into another Iraqi tragedy.

REUTERS