“Three people died here, including two Sudanese whose legs were amputated by the blast, and 14 were wounded,” said Captain Issam at the neurological hospital, one of those to which casualties were taken.In a sign of the unpopularity of the US-led occupation among Iraqis, a crowd spontaneously gathered after the bombing and danced in delight around a charred body lying in the road. A suicide car bomb killed 13 people, including five foreigners, in central Baghdad yesterday as insurgents stepped up attacks aimed at driving foreign contractors out of the country. Two Britons, an American and a Frenchman were among the dead and another 10 contractors were wounded.”I am a grocer and I was in the square buying provisions when I saw three or four American cars and then I heard the explosion,” said Majid Sadullah as he sat, still trembling from shock, on a bed in a nearby hospital and bleeding from cuts caused by flying metal.The blast destroyed eight vehicles and turned nearby shops and a two-storey house into rubble. But she was not delighted by the prospect of Mr Emery going to Iraq. “I’ve been through this before with someone else,” she said..

I can be gone for months and come back in and it’s just like I just walked from the day before. That’s pretty much how we are.”WARREN BLADESMr Blades, 55, retired in January after a career working for the oil giant Exxon in Louisiana. That’s exactly what happened.”Back home with his wife Kellie, Mr Hamill remains positive about what happened “We’re just country people. This was always going to happen.”Though Mr Hamill spent eight months away from his family, he said he would consider returning to Iraq if his security could be guaranteed. “Now I think I am a marked man and I might be a risk to others. I have not talked to KBR about it.”Mr Hamill’s arm was injured in the attack on his convoy and his captors carried out rudimentary surgery on him without any anaesthetic.During his time in captivity, Mr Hamill heard a US helicopter, prised open the door of the hut in which he was being held and ran out waving his shirt, but American patrol did not spot him.”When I escaped that first time and had to go and put myself back in the building…

I told myself the Lord doesn’t want the soldiers or anyone else to break in and find me,” he told the Baptist Press “He wants me .. to get out and go to them. “It was a chance to pay off my debts quickly, otherwise it would have taken me years,” he said. Mr Hamill, a devout Christian, said: “I think God was preparing me for this all my life. He spent 23 days in captivity before he escaped and was rescued by US troops. Every day he would recite the 23rd Psalm – “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”Speaking by telephone, Mr Hamill, explained that he had gone to Iraq to try and save his family farm, which was facing bankruptcy after three generations.