Family reeling from matriarch's brutal slaying

[Mephisto]

Family reeling from matriarch's brutal slaying

POSTED: 9:16 p.m. EDT, September 28, 2006

By Arwa Damon
CNN
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- "They killed my mother! God help me, they killed my mother!" Osama Rumani sobbed into his cell phone before handing it to his brother Ali, who was crying even harder.

At the other end of the line were relatives in Canada. As Ali spoke to them, Osama cursed the unknown killers through his tears: "May God orphan you. May you lose your mother and go through this pain. Shoot her once, shoot her twice, break her leg, her arms, but why this?"

Osama covered his face as he cried. His mother, Umm Luma, was an ordinary citizen, well-loved in the neighborhood where she was gunned down in front of her home.

In recent months, terrorists and death squads in Iraq have increased attacks on civilians. Though the Pentagon says the sectarian violence is not tantamount to civil war, it concedes that the swelling sectarian strife has produced an upsurge in attacks, kidnappings and execution-style killings.

According to a Pentagon report, Iraqi casualties jumped 51 percent this summer, and the Baghdad coroner's office reported receiving 3,400 bodies in June and July. Ninety percent of them had been killed execution-style, the report said.

Umm Luma lost her husband to illness two years ago, after she had reared four sons and two daughters.

"She had a strong personality, she was our leader at home," said her niece, Rafal Abbas.

But beneath Rafal's calm façade, she is haunted not only by the murder she witnessed, but also by the fear that the killers might come back.

Before Umm Luma's death, the family says it had received two written threats in a year. Wrapped in the second was a bullet. The message was chilling.

"The time has come to bring down fair punishment on you traitors, you half men, by chopping off your rotten heads that sold religion, honor and the country to the occupation," it began.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/...ims/index.html
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"We are living in extraordinary fear. If I am home alone, I get terrified," she said. "Yesterday, the door blew open and I fainted because I thought that they had come for us."

As his cousin explained the family's fear, Osama broke down, sobbing and shaking as he recalled tending to his slain mother that day.

"I saw my mother on the street. I picked up her brains with my own hands and wrapped it," Osama said, repeating the words, "picked up her brains."

Umm Luma dreamed of a secure Iraq, Rafal said, but now her loved ones live with the fear that they might not live to see that dream's achievement.

"We are scared of all of Iraq," Rafal said. "If we go out, we are afraid someone is going to kill us. Even at home we are afraid and we pile things against the door."
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Hey, at least they got to vote, right?

[Mephisto]

Here's another one to cheer you up, Pardalis.