Horrifying Images of the Iraq War

A man looks at streams of blood beneath blown-out windows following a car bomb attack on the offices of al-Sabah, the official Iraqi newspaper, founded after the arrest of Saddam Hussein.

The bodies of slain prisoners outside the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, discovered by coalition forces shortly after the invasion.

A boy walks past a destroyed warehouse, looted by Iraqis a month after the invasion.

Bodies of Shi’ite Muslims executed by Hussein’s regime after the first Gulf War, discovered in a mass grave outside Al Musayyib, south of Baghdad, two months after coalition forces arrived, and now waiting to be identified by their families.

U.S. Air Force personnel don gas masks at an unnamed Persian Gulf airbase before taking off for Iraq.

Smoke rises from oil burning in trenches on the edge of Baghdad following a U.S. missile strike.

Marines from Task Force Tarawa, an air-ground brigade, carrying a wounded comrade to safety after a gun battle in Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq.

Workers from the Kuwait Oil Company attempt to extinguish a fierce oil well fire in the massive Rumaila oil fields near the Kuwaiti border.

A man covers his nose and mouth to protect against smoke from oil fires burning near the entrance to the Ba’ath Party stronghold of Basra.

U.S. Army M1/A1 Abrams tanks engage in a live-fire training session near the Iraqi border in northern Kuwait in preparation for the invasion.

Fires rage in Baghdad after massive bombing strikes during the optimistic but ultimately ineffective U.S. “shock and awe” air campaign.

A U.S. Marine inspects the scene following the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians at Marine hands near Haditha, in northwestern Iraq, in 2005 – an episode that culminated with four Marines being charged with murder.

A car bomb exploded by a suicide bomber, possibly a member of al-Qaeda, leaves a crater and other mangled vehicles on a Baghdad street.

A boy seems to be asking “Why is this going on” as a gas station fire, ignited by an explosion that killed at least three people, rages in the background.

Two masked Iraqi insurgents, part of a group targeting American and other coalition troops, pose with their weapons.

A U.S. Air Force medic treats a 3-year-old Iraqi burn victim on a C-17 Globemaster III en route to the U.S., where the child will receive specialized care.

Members of the 1st Marine Division fire a mortar from a Stryker combat vehicle in Al Anbar province in western Iraq.

An Iraqi policeman seems lost in thought outside the Ministry of Justice in Baghdad, site of one of two car bomb explosions the previous day, which killed more than 130 people in total.

A man attempts to clean up some of the damage caused by a car bomb explosion in which two people were killed in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood.

A woman cries the name of her son to the heavens at the site of a mass grave at Hillah, south of Baghdad, discovered by coalition forces.

At Baghdad’s Chavdar Saddam Hospital, blood runs from the body of a Shi’ite woman slain in a firefight between Shi’ites and pro-Hussain Fedayeen.

A passerby covers the body of a man killed on the road to Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

Air Force medics tend to wounded Americans on a C-17 Globemaster III medical evacuation aircraft, heading from Balad Air Base in Iraq to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Officers watch a televised address by President Bush in January 2007 from their base at Camp Ramadi in Al Anbar province during which he announced a troop increase of 20,000 forces.

An Iraqi boy sits in al-Kadhimiya Hospital in Baghdad after having been injured in a car bomb explosion in the al-Hurriyah neighborhood that claimed at least 51 lives.

U.S. Army troops secure an abandoned United Nations position in Kuwait, 75 feet from the Iraqi border, in preparation for the land invasion, after the air war has already begun.