ISIS Sent Four Car Bombs. The Last One Hit Me.

[TomSea]

ISIS Sent Four Car Bombs.
The Last One Hit Me.

Mr. Denton, a photographer for The New York Times, was with Iraqi counterterrorism forces as they began pushing toward Mosul last week.

BARTELLA, Iraq — Our convoy had already been targeted by suicide car bombs three times, over a long day spent under fire. So the Iraqi forces had brought up a tank, and its main gun kept scanning the road ahead toward Mosul.

But the shouts started coming from behind us instead, and when I turned to look, I knew right away: Here was bomb No. 4, seemingly out of nowhere. By the time I saw it, the vehicle was maybe 70 feet away.

Under peaceful circumstances, that drive would take maybe an hour and a half. But it would take the unit we were with nearly all day just to push three miles into Islamic State territory to the western edge of Bartella, where the troops were to cut off the Islamic State fighters holed up in the town, keeping them from escaping to Mosul or being reinforced from there. There were bombs all along the road, and nearly every village along the way would be a source of attack.

An Iraqi reporter for The Times and I were traveling with a television crew from the British news service ITN. We climbed up into a huge Iraqi Army MRAP — a mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle — in the middle of a large convoy of vehicles preparing to leave for Bartella.

Read More At: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/world/middleeast/iraq-mosul-isis-car-bombs.html?_r=0