BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- They used unarmed guards and eschewed elaborate security because in Iraq, as elsewhere in the world, they felt protected by their instantly recognizable symbol of benevolent assistance: a red cross.
Then a car bomb exploded near their central Baghdad headquarters on Monday morning, killing 12 people and injuring at least 10 others.
"So many people are dead, why?" said Moutasser Jalal Taher, 23, a security guard who spoke angrily, through clenched teeth, about the attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC. "They are innocent people and it's a humanitarian organization."
The question reverberated unanswered throughout the day, beginning when employees arrived for work and found pandemonium. The building's beige facade was a chalky, blackened mess of rubble. Water gushed onto the street from a pipe cracked by the blast. Cars were singed and burned. And a crater six feet deep remained where a vehicle resembling a Red Cross ambulance and packed with explosives blew up during rush hour.
For the humanitarian agency, the blast shattered the belief that 23 years of good deeds in Iraq could be worn like protective armor against violence. "We were always confident that people knew us and that our work here would protect us," said Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Baghdad. "How do we understand this?" ...
Since the group's inception in 1863, the red cross emblem -- a red crescent in Muslim countries -- has been a symbol of neutral humanitarian assistance in war-ravaged countries. The Red Cross has served as a mediator between combatants and a monitor of the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions.
Red Cross workers outside Iraq said Monday's suicide bombing was unprecedented even by the worsening standards of recent conflicts -- because a Red Cross compound was specifically targeted by a bomb and because the attacker used what looked like a Red Cross/Red Crescent ambulance to deliver the device.
"I can remember thefts and I can remember blockages -- when they didn't let us out of our compound, like in Somalia," said Nina Winquist, a Finn who worked for the Red Cross for 15 years in such trouble spots as Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. But "I can't think of any incident where there was a car bomb at a delegation."
"This is very serious, because this is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and Iraq is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions," said Marc Gentilini, a physician and president of the French Red Cross.
