A First! Snow Falls in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (AP) — After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they'd pretty much seen it all. But Friday morning, as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

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"This is so unusual, and I don't know whether or not it's a lesson from God,'' Karim said.

Some said they'd seen snow only in movies.

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For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom
across to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. As of
late afternoon, there were no reports of violence. The snow showed no
favoritism as it fell faintly on neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike,
and (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead.