ISIS Sent Four Car Bombs. The Last One Hit Me.
After a long day in a convoy near Mosul, it seemed safe for a photographer and Iraqi troops to exit their vehicle. Abruptly someone screamed, “Car bomb!”
Mr. Denton, a photographer for The Fresh York Times, was with Iraqi counterterrorism compels 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 compels had brought up a tank, and its main gun kept scanning the road ahead toward Mosul.
But the shouts began coming from behind us instead, and when I turned to look, I knew right away: Here was Bomb No. Four, seemingly out of nowhere. By the time I spotted it, the vehicle was maybe seventy feet away.
The Moment of the Attack
Our military convoy was attacked on Oct. 21.
By ITV NEWS on Publish Date October 25, 2016. .
We were with a unit of elite Iraqi counterterrorism compels, who on the morning of Oct. Twenty were making their very first moves in the broader battle to take Mosul back from the Islamic State.
The commandos’ very first big objective was to surround and clear Bartella, a militant-held town about six miles east of the outer fringes of Mosul. Embarking out from an Iraqi base around five a.m., the troops began pushing east along the main highway that links the Kurdish regional capital, Erbil, with Mosul.
Under peaceful circumstances, that drive would take maybe an hour and a half. But it would take the unit we were with almost all day just to thrust 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 almost every village along the way would be a source of attack.
An Iraqi reporter for The Times and I were traveling with a television team from the British news service ITN. We climbed into a fat Iraqi Army MRAP — a mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle — in the middle of a large convoy of vehicles preparing to leave for Bartella.
As we set out, however, the team was told that our vehicle would be leading the way, transporting the ordnance disposition experts who would be working to clear the convoy’s routes through the fields and villages south of the highway.
I was jumpy, but there was no time to stop and figure out how to shift to vehicles behind us. We hadn’t gone far, but we were already taking fire from different directions.
Inwards the Convoy Before the Attack
Inwards an Iraqi military convoy traveling through Bartella, Iraq.
By ITV NEWS on Publish Date October 25, 2016. .
After cutting south, the convoy, now accompanied by an Iraqi Army M1A1 Abrams tank, headed off the road for the relative safety of the open fields, with the expectation that there would be fewer mines and improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.s.
As we moved at about five miles per hour, passing by the puny, sun-baked hamlets that dot the approaches to Bartella, we increasingly came under machine-gun fire from concealed Islamic State positions. Bullets kicked up dust around our convoy and pinged off the vehicle’s armored exterior and glass, leaving spider-web-like cracks in the thick windows.
Volleys of mortar shells crashed around us, the militants looking to find their range among the crawling line of vehicles, but never succeeding.
The vehicle commander, Lt. Muhammad Altimimi, repeatedly pointed out suspicious buildings and the fleeting shadows of Islamic State fighters moving among points of concealment, encouraging the Abrams tank and an armored bulldozer to shove ahead of us.
The very first moment of strain occurred as we came upon the very first spread of paved road that the convoy had to cross.
The bulldozer went ahead, scraping away some of the pavement and building up a petite berm to protect the convoy from any suicide bombers who might attempt to hit the dozens of Humvees as they traversed the road.
A hamlet a little more than two hundred yards up the road seemed to be an ideal staging point for such a vehicle, I recall thinking. Our vehicle crossed the road without incident, but we were soon stuck in a field, calling for the bulldozer again to pack in a trench blocking our way, dug by the Islamic State for just that reason.
The arrival of the very first suicide car bomb was heralded by the sound of machine guns and vehicle-mounted grenade launchers going fully automatic. Still waiting for the bulldozer to finish its work, we had pulled over into a barren field, more than three hundred yards from any buildings.
The suicide vehicle gained speed on a gentle decline from the hamlet that had seemed riskily close, and attempted to veer off-road toward a cluster of vehicles just behind us. Weighed down by steel plates painted a abate green and coyote brown, and by its explosive payload, the car careened clumsily into the field, hitting a petite ditch and spinning over.
I photographed as the Iraqis fired at the overturned vehicle, sitting like a flipped turtle in the field, until it erupted in a big explosion, raising the dust around us.
After the trench was packed, we were underway again, making a right turn and now heading north toward the commandos’ objective: the western edge of Bartella, and the four-lane highway that links Erbil to Mosul.
Almost as soon as we did so, the convoy began taking even stronger fire. Bullets again pinged off the vehicle, and mortar shells sent up plumes of dust around us. The front right tire of our MRAP was shot out, but the squad continued to drive forward, the vehicle’s will-less becoming more pronounced as we bounced over the uneven terrain.
Lieutenant Altimimi told everyone in the vehicle, journalists included, to see through the windows for suicide car bombs. Yelling over the radio indicated that the back of the convoy had ruined another suicide vehicle, and a steep plume of smoke and dust was draping in the sky less than a mile away.
We soon spotted a pickup truck parked in the shadows of an alleyway inbetween a nearby set of buildings, and halted, just brief of another open up of paved road. Abruptly, a different vehicle, stacked with painted, makeshift armor, lumbered out from behind the buildings, making a left as it attempted to pick up speed toward us.
The MRAP’s driver panicked as he attempted to maneuver our bruised vehicle further back, gunning the engine and eventually finding gear as the suicide car bomb attempted to leave the road.
From the limited visibility in the back of our rapidly bouncing and turning vehicle, I was just able to peek the car bomb as it seemed to get stuck in a puny ditch, maybe fifty or sixty yards from us. The Iraqi tank had moved up beside us and took the opening for an lighter shot with its main gun. The suicide vehicle blew apart, the concussion wave rocking our vehicle.
Everyone inwards erupted in applause. That one had gotten close.
We limped on, eventually reaching the main Erbil-Mosul road leading west from Bartella.
With the front right tire almost fully disintegrated, we could slightly budge at more than a crawl. The ordnance removal technicians worked ahead of us, in coordination with the bulldozer, the tank and a few Humvees. Over just a few hundred yards of road, they cleared four big I.E.D.s, while Islamic State fighters kept shooting at the convoy.
The Iraqis answered with MK-19 grenade launchers and other vehicle-mounted weapons.
There was little for us to do other than wait in the relative safety of the vehicle while the Iraqi compels worked to clear the area and set up a security perimeter as the sun went down in the late afternoon.
We thought that moment had come when an officer knocked on the rear doors and, having eliminated his figure armor, invited us to step out of the MRAP.
“What are you doing here?” he joked. The gunfire had stopped, and the bulldozer had built an earthen berm blocking the main highway. The Iraqi tank set up behind it with its main gun turret pointed toward Mosul, keeping see for another vehicle bomb.
It seemed like a relatively reasonable time to photograph the column and surroundings from outside the vehicle, as soldiers milled about and began to check the buildings they would most likely be occupying that night.
I climbed down and began to take photographs, making sure that I kept moving and was near cover, in case there were any snipers left in the area.
I was walking back to our vehicle when someone screamed in Arabic, “Car bomb!” As I turned, I spotted it, like an armadillo covered in steel plates, lumbering toward us from a narrow alleyway on the edge of town. It was about seventy or eighty feet away, and began making an almost lazy left turn, as if it were merging into traffic.
ISIS Footage of the Attack
The Islamic State collective movie that purportedly shows the suicide car bomb attacking the convoy.
By AMAQ MEDIA AGENCY, VIA STORYFUL on Publish Date October 25, 2016. .
As everyone began to run, and the soldiers opened up on the vehicle, my only thought was to get low and find cover. I attempted to get behind the nearest Humvee, as quickly as I could run in a crouch.
I was in the open for maybe four or five seconds, but that was too long.
The explosion was ample, and I felt something hit the top of my right wrist. Somehow there was no ache yet — in the moment I actually thought of a teacher’s ruler smacking my wrist. Hard to explain.
I stopped behind the Humvee I’d been aiming for, with two Iraqi soldiers ahead of me. One of them was screaming, checking his bod for wounds and in a clear state of fright.
I looked down at my wrist and could shortly see the bone through a deep gash before the wound packed with blood.
I put my arm over it to apply pressure. One part of me was fixated on moving my fingers and checking the mobility in my wrist, while the rest was worried about the possibility of a follow-up attack.
Another Iraqi soldier came up to me through the dust and smoke. He pulled off one of the tourniquets I keep on my bod armor and commenced attempting to apply it to my arm. I flapped him off — there was no sign of an arterial bleed.
I made my way back to the MRAP, where one of the journalists from ITN helped me apply a compression bandage. I was loaded into the flatbed of a Humvee with Iraqi soldiers who had also been wounded, and we were driven back behind their lines.
I’d been amazingly fortunate, and the wound looked worse than it was. There was no shrapnel lodged inwards, no ligaments or tendons ripped, and an X-ray at the hospital in Erbil later that night demonstrated no signs of cracked bones.
It was hard not to think about what could have happened, tho’. Even a slightly worse alternative would have switched everything: If the shrapnel had hit just an inch to the left, I could have lost my right palm, or the use of it.
Bryan Denton is a photojournalist based in Beirut, Lebanon. Mr. Denton has worked frequently on assignment for The Fresh York Times covering conflicts, culture and crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and the Philippines, among others.
A version of this article emerges in print on October 27, 2016, on Page A1 of the Fresh York edition with the headline: Peaceful, Then a Sob: ‘Car Bomb!’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
We’re interested in your feedback on this page. Tell us what you think.