Heroes of Baghdad
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reporters' despatches: already this year more than seven thousand people have been killed in the upsurge of violence in Iraq. Andrew Hosken explores a country full of widows, orphans and frightened people mourning the loss of loved ones. In America, two significant anniversaries - Allan Little has been to the locations involved, Gettysburg and Dallas, and uncovers surprising revelations about the state of the USA today. The president of Bulgaria's talking of 'emergency' as demonstrations against the government show no sign of letting up - Emma Jane Kirby's been talking to the protestors in the capital, Sofia. Peter Day visits a Chinese village where they haven't yet turned their backs on the 'Great Helmsman' Mao tse Tung. And as the big Thanksgiving Day American football matches approach, Mike Wendling reflects on a sport facing difficult questions about the safety of its players. The producer of From Our Own Correspondent is Tony Grant
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello this is from our own correspondent a download from BBC Radio and here with the latest edition is Kate Aide. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello. Today every trip to the office shop or school now requires extraordinary courage. How do Iraqis cope amid the |
| 0:15.3 | growing violence? The Bulgarian presidents talking of emergency as daily |
| 0:20.4 | demonstrations continue against the government. |
| 0:24.0 | Americans get ready for the big Thanksgiving Day football games, but serious questions are |
| 0:28.8 | now being asked about the dangers of their sport. |
| 0:32.1 | And we're off to a village in China where at |
| 0:34.2 | 615 in the morning they still sing the praises of Chairman Mao. Iraq is |
| 0:40.7 | experiencing its worst sectarian violence in more than five years. |
| 0:45.0 | Over a thousand people were killed last month. |
| 0:47.5 | Twenty-three died yesterday alone in bombings and shootings. |
| 0:51.0 | Attacks by extremist Sunni militants, some linked to Al-Qaeda, threatened to |
| 0:55.8 | pitch the country into a new civil war. Indeed, many Iraqis believe that's their intention. |
| 1:01.8 | Most of the attacks are taking place in Baghdad. |
| 1:04.1 | Andrew Hoskin has been trying to find out how people there live with the daily |
| 1:08.8 | violence. The first thing to greet me on arrival at Baghdad International was a powerful smell of sewage. |
| 1:15.6 | Before long I was whisked into the menacing embrace of the city. |
| 1:19.2 | Have arrived safely in Baghdad? I texted back to the office, before adding Riley, if that is not a contradiction in terms. |
| 1:28.4 | As our car sank into the metallic churn of Baghdad traffic, I felt I was now a participant in one of the world's more |
| 1:34.1 | macabre lotteries. True, the chances of your number being up in this |
| 1:39.2 | metropolis of 5 million is still statistically remote, but dozens of people die horribly, suddenly, every day here, |
| 1:47.0 | believing the same thing. Already this year almost 8,000 people have been killed in Iraq, nearly twice the number of people who died in the 40 |
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