Troops Shelter an Unlikely Survivor in Baghdad

Johan Spanner for The New York Times
Staff Sgt. David D. Highsmith took his turn with little Fatima, who was found under a metal sheet after her mother was killed.


"By STEPHEN FARRELL
Published: August 13, 2007
BAGHDAD, Aug. 12 —

Fatima Jbouri should be dead. Nine months old, underweight, malnourished, fatherless and half Sunni, half Shiite, she already had enough deadly handicaps growing up in Saydia, a battlefield suburb that has become one of the worst sectarian killing zones in Baghdad. On July 25, a death squad shot her mother and uncle — each three times in the head — in their dilapidated half-finished squat. E.J.K.’s, in American military shorthand: extrajudicial killings.
Fatima’s 7-year-old brother fled and flagged down a joint patrol of the Iraqi National Police and American soldiers. The Iraqis found the bodies and collected up Fatima’s siblings from neighboring houses. But the 7-year-old kept asking, “What about my sister?”
Outside, in the garbage-strewn yard, they found the whimpering baby, hidden under a metal sheet in 120-degree heat.
Fatima survived. She is in the American military’s 28th Combat Support Hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Nurses say she weighed less than half the normal weight of a 9-month-old, but she is recovering well. "


Troops Shelter an Unlikely Survivor in Baghdad - New York Times: