Today was a bad one. Another friend was kid­napped last night, and this morn­ing a mor­tar shell hit our com­pound. Thank­fully, my friend was released after a day — but he was very lucky. (More details to come tomor­row after he leaves the coun­try.) The mor­tar caused no real dam­age, hamdil­lah, but hit a house near one of the hotels in the com­pound. The explo­sion, in size and inten­sity, sounded exactly like the car bomb that hit the Karma hotel back in May.

Stay­ing here is becom­ing increas­ingly unten­able. There’s talk of TIME mov­ing me up north for a cou­ple of months, which would be a wel­come change, to be hon­est. I’ve not been able to get out of the com­pound, and after the kid­nap­ping, I’m dis­in­clined to even make the attempt. The bot­tom line is I can’t work like this and I’m get­ting more and more frus­trated, as I’ve men­tioned. Hope­fully, by mov­ing to the north for a lit­tle while, my work will improve and so will my state of mind.

More as the sit­u­a­tion devel­ops, but things are chang­ing here in Bagh­dad — for the worse.

UPDATE 2321 +0300 And now a large car bomb with many casu­al­ties — in first reports — has just gone off down the street from our compound.