Dying Gasp

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The bomb aboard the number nine tram claimed seventeen lives. Sixteen were passengers.

The seventeenth was the driver of a nearby postal truck. Mail from his shattered vehicle littered the cobblestones in front of the Museum of the Tropics and fluttered, like tiny flags, from the branches of the linden trees.

An hour later, in a shaky VHS video delivered to the studios of Al Jazeera in Dakar, a masked man, posing in front of a green banner, took responsibility for the outrage. A group calling themselves Justice for Islam, he said, had acted “in reprisal for Dutch support of the American crusaders’ continuing occupation of Iraq.” The Dutch had withdrawn their last troops from Iraq long since, but that was something the terrorists chose to overlook.

The incident took place on a glorious April day, chilly but without the usual breeze. The absence of wind ensured that much of the scattered mail stayed in the area of the blast instead of littering the neighboring streets and being blown into canals.

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