The 34 children killed on Thursday had been eating sweets and playing football
Some of the children cry. Some refuse to speak, shivering in shock at the day's horror. Others lie lifeless in the morgue of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital.
An orderly pushes a bed carrying a small dead boy, his head and torso wrapped in a clean white sheet, his lifeless hand resting on his heart.
Abdul-Rahman al-Jabouri, 11, shrieks in pain, his body clad only in bandages. He had approached US soldiers at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a restored sewage pump in the al-Rashid district. They were giving out candy and jostling playfully with the children when the bombs went off on Thursday.
The result was the largest death toll of children in any insurgent attack since the Iraq conflict began. At least 34 children died, along with eight adults.
Major Phil Smith, spokesman for the US First Cavalry Division, said the two blasts were caused by car bombs, as was a third aimed at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint about 2km away. Ten soldiers were injured, he said.