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MALAYSIAN DIPLOMATS: OUR STORIES
Amman to ask for assistance and to facilitate the necessary arrangements at
the Iraq-Jordan border.
T e journey to Amman took longer than anticipated due to problems at the
border. Normally the drive from Baghdad to Amman, which is approximately
900 kilometres, would take around 10 to 11 hours. However, it took them
more than 18 hours to reach Amman. Fortunately, our Malaysian embassy
colleagues were at the border to help and ensure that everyone was allowed
into Jordan. After one night at a hotel in Amman, they were all f own back
to Kuala Lumpur using the Royal Jordanian Airlines plane. I was grateful
that everyone was safe and no one was harmed. Back in Kuala Lumpur, my
elder daughter had to be hospitalised for a few days due to dehydration and
infection.
T e rest of us – the ambassador, the ambassador’s personal assistant and
I – stayed behind in Baghdad to “man the fort”. Around f ve Malaysian
students made the decision to not be evacuated. T ey stayed with us and
made themselves useful during the time when our families were not with us.
Some of them helped with the cooking and cleaning.
After two days of bombings, I decided to drive around Baghdad and see for
myself the devastation and the extent of the destruction caused by the missile
attacks. I asked Waheed, one of the local staf who works with the embassy, to
accompany me. I saw with my own eyes how the defence ministry building
was completely damaged. Next to that building was Saddam’s Children’s
Hospital, the largest maternity hospital in Baghdad. All the windows in the
hospital were blown out by the force of the blast. I heard later that the
doctors and the nurses were forced to evacuate all the patients in the middle
of the attack. Waheed mentioned to me that some mothers spontaneously
went into labour, and a few involuntarily aborted their pregnancies. Some
babies in incubators died due to lack of oxygen as the electricity supply was
cut of . Many people were in local hospitals with shrapnel wounds. No one
knew how many people died. I even saw one missile land in the Karrada
district, a business area of Baghdad, creating a big crater which later was
f lled with water from a burst water pipe.
T e bombings lasted until 20 December, just a day before the beginning
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