Living under war shadow

Mays, an Iraqi Shi'ite girl, cries after a mortar shell which landed outside the family's home in a Najaf residential area and injured her uncle, August 18, 2004. The leader of a Shi'ite uprising in Iraq agreed to leave a holy shrine encircled by U.S. Marines in Najaf, hours after the interim government threatened to storm it and drive out his fighters. [Reuters]

An Iraqi girl, carried by her uncle, grieves after losing her mother and sister during clashes between U.S. forces and militiamen royal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the eastern Baghdad's suburb of al-Sadr August 17, 2004. Fierce clashes erupted in Sadr City late August 16, 2004, following an afternoon of battles after militia exploded a bomb under a U.S. tank. [Reuters]

A Shiite woman cries for her neighbor, shot and killed in the crossfire, as heavy gun battles resonated throughout the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq on Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004. U.S. forces launched a major offensive to crush a militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighting between U.S. forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia began here a week ago and has spread to other Shiite areas of the country. [AP]

Maria Lazova, mother of the Bulgarian truck driver Georgy Lazov who was executed in Iraq, is comforted by relative as she cries waiting the coffin of her son in the village of Kocherinovo, August 3, 2004. Lazov was one of the two Bulgarian truck drivers kidnapped in Iraq on June 29. [Reuters]