'In my pajamas, my hair full of grit, I . . . went out'

The writer, an Iraqi who works for the Globe, was in the Hamra Hotel in Baghdad yesterday when a pair of car bombs exploded outside, killing at least eight Iraqis and wounding more than 40 in the nearby streets and buildings. Here is his account of the blasts and their chaotic aftermath.

BAGHDAD -- I was still asleep when a loud explosion shook the bedroom, popping the bomb-proof fiberglass window out of its frame and onto my bed. It was just after 8 a.m.

I hadn't felt an explosion this strong since a Scud missile hit my family's street in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war in 1987, twisting a steel window frame that we were never able to bend back into shape.

When I opened my eyes, I saw an orange cloud getting darker and darker from the dirt thrown up by the explosion. The blast was so loud that my mother told me later that she heard it on the other side of the city.

Thick dust covered the room, making it hard to breathe. The bed was sprinkled with parts of the window frame.

As I got up a few seconds after the blast, I heard a second, even louder, explosion.

Gunshots from the guards rang out immediately. It sounded like the bullets were coming from every direction.

I took cover in the narrow interior corridor of the suite housing the Globe bureau and living quarters, since there are no windows there and it is better protected.

Still in my pajamas, my hair full of grit, I grabbed a bullet-proof vest, put on slippers, and went out into the hall.

Three security guards were running through the hotel, checking each floor for wounded people and for intruders who might have sneaked in during the chaos.

The state of the shattered glass on the landing alarmed me. I know from experience growing up in Iraq that the stronger the explosion, the smaller the fragments of shattered glass. The thick glass had been pulverized into pieces the size of peas.

I walked down to the lobby gingerly so as not to slip over the broken glass. I noticed a few drops of blood on the stairs.

The lobby had been transformed by the blasts. Light fixtures hung by fragile, ragged wires. An entire window frame tilted crazily, as if about to fall away from the hotel.

It was a clear and sunny day. But on the street, the dust was so thick it obscured the entire area in front of the hotel.

I walked out the hotel's main entrance, past rows of smashed cars on either side of the street.

I wanted to see how bad the damage was, but once I got to the blast site and saw the grieving relatives of the victims, I wished I had never gone that close.

Across the street, only a few shards remained of the glass façade of the Flowers Land Hotel. Curtains were splayed over balcony railings, and I could see directly into the bedrooms.

One of the Hamra's guards showed me a melted piece of shrapnel with sharp ends 2-feet long, which looked like it came from one of the bomb cars.

Chunks of human flesh and body parts, including a foot and a hand, and small pieces of shrapnel littered the street in front of the hotel, which contains the bureaus of about a dozen Western news organizations, including the Globe.

The journalists in the hotel all had rushed to the site of the explosions, cameras and notepads in hand, to report on the attack. A 10-foot concrete blast wall had been built to protect journalists using the hotel's rear entrance. The wall prevented the attackers from reaching the hotel itself, but the explosions reduced most of the wall to rubble and left a big crater.

The blasts sent one enormous piece of cement, which had been put in place by a front-end loader, tumbling like a domino.

Two houses adjacent to the Hamra were destroyed. Many of the dead came from the families asleep inside; because Friday is the Muslim holy day, most of the residents of the neighborhood around the Hamra were still at home.

The four-story apartment building next door looked like an oversize dollhouse, its front ripped away to expose the rooms inside.

Firemen dug in the rubble for survivors, while about them flames burned in the crater, the cars, and wrecked houses. The water from their hoses filled the street, turning it into a small river washing away some of the dirt, oil, and blood.