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The scenes Di Lauro captured before the crowd turned on him |
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Photographer Marco di Lauro was in Karbala yesterday covering Ashura for this website and Getty Images.
Below is his account of what happened published in the hope it will help people understand the horror and senselessness of this violence.
"Yesterday morning I left my hotel at 5am to cover the procession of the Shi’a cutting their heads with swords. I came back at 9am to
send the pictures when I heard the first explosion on the main road next to my hotel.
I ran down the stairs and heard the second one; soon I was running towards the sites of the two explosions.
The blast of the third explosion ran me down on the ground; fortunately I was not close enough to get killed.
Bodies, feet, arms were everywhere. Pieces of flesh flew at me. I stood up and took 14 shoots and then the crowd ran towards
me and they tried to lynch me.
They beat me up with their fists, a chair; they kicked me, and a guy tried to stab me with a knife. If it wasn't for a group of
Iranian pilgrims who rescued me from the crowd I would have been lynched.
When I was on the floor after the blast and I start taking pictures of a wounded man who has lost his legs, instead of helping him
I stood up, stepped back and shot a picture before moving to the next frame.
I don't know if I will ever be able to forget that, in that moment I was on auto-pilot, I have done what I am used to, this is part
of the eternal moral and ethical dilemma of war photography, if you should take a picture or help.
I don't know exactly which the correct answer is but I hope that those pictures are going to help him and to show what horror is.
It was a painful, powerful, intense experience, especially to witness such an explosion from so close and seeing so many innocents people
die in the name of hate.
The (physical) pain will go away in a week and maybe one I day I will forget about all this, but I will always go back to the streets to
take those pictures as I have done for the last 12 years to tell those people’s stories.
Because this is the only way those innocent people who died in name of hate will have a voice."
Italian photographer, Marco di Lauro has been based in Iraq for the last 12 months. His photographs described here were featured on the front pages of The Telegraph and Guardian today.
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