Musayyib

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 17 - Even in Iraq, where shocking killings have become part of daily life, some acts are so profoundly violent that the country seems to pause, trying to fathom what happened.

Iraqis gathered Sunday at the scene of an explosion in Musayyib, south of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber ignited a fuel tanker on Saturday.

Several shops in Musayyib were destroyed by the blast on Saturday.

That was the case on Sunday, after a suicide bomber appeared in Musayyib, a poor town just south of Baghdad, and blew himself up under a fuel tanker on Saturday night, igniting a fireball that engulfed cars, shops and homes. At least 71 people died; 156 were wounded. Some bodies were badly charred, making identification difficult.

Everyday seems to bring more of the same bad news from Iraq. More suicide bombers, kidnapped soldiers, dead children. Their stories all seem to blend together in one neverending loop of human suffering. Stalin said that a single death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. But the dead of Iraq don't even make it as a statistic, because we don't count them. They become static. Background noise. Something your newscaster dashes through in a serious-but-matter-of-fact voice before moving on to the news items that actually hold our attention.