Posted on 04/17/2005 5:10:12 PM PDT by jimbo123
SAN FRANCISCO - A woman who founded a humanitarian group to aid civilian casualties in Iraq has died in a car bombing in Baghdad, officials said Sunday.
Marla Ruzicka, founder of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, died Saturday in the blast, which also killed an Iraqi and another foreigner, officials said. She had been in Iraq conducting door-to-door surveys trying to determine the number of civilian casualties in the country.
Ruzicka, 28, founded CIVIC in 2003 to "mitigate the impact of the conflict and its aftermath on the people of Iraq by ensuring that timely and effective life-saving assistance is provided to those in need," according to the group's Web site.
Ruzicka's parents said Sunday they were notified of her death just hours after the explosion. U.S. Embassy officials publicly released Ruzicka's name Sunday.
"We've been very worried about her but we know better than to tell our children not to do anything. We were supportive and just reminded her to be careful," said her mother, Nancy Ruzicka, of Lakeport.
She said her daughter had left her a telephone message the night before her death that said, "Mom and dad, I love you. I'm OK."
"She cared about people and gave people her love and help," Nancy Ruzicka said. "I'll remember the love she spread around the world and the good ambassador that she was for her country."
Ruzicka got her start working for non-governmental organizations 10 years ago at the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange.
"It's a terrible tragedy and a tragic irony that somebody who devoted her life to helping the victims of war would herself become a victim of war," said Medea Benjamin, the group's director.
Just great - another Leftist martyr.
God rest her soul. She was trying to give comfort to others.
Killed surveying civilian deaths.
There has to be some irony in there somewhere.
Remember Rachel Corrie -- an American nonviolent human rights protestor.
Any death is a tragedy, but...
Was she hoping the terrorists would notice she was a liberal and thereby not kill her?
Talk about irony.
Probably less painful way to go than being squished by a bulldozer.
Eh... I actually have some sympathy in this case - the deceased wasn't doing something quite as stupid as standing in front of a bulldozer. And technically, she was ministering to others...
Less funny, at any rate.
I could barely get out a chuckle, myself.
Hope that was the case, and if so you're right. But it sounds more like she was looking for evidence to blast the US.
I agree. At least this lib put her actions were her mouth was.
"It's a terrible tragedy and a tragic irony that somebody who devoted her life to helping the victims of war would herself become a victim of war," said Medea Benjamin,"
Uh well genius, she wasn't a victim of war she was the victim of a terrorist.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls..........
Thoughts and prayers to her family and loved ones.
It's not what you think. She was working for Medea Benjamin, the American Communist who penned the pro-Castro Cuban Revolution book as well as who was caught giving several hundred thousand Dollars to the insurgency in Falluja.
Heck, she was probably *inside* the suicide car bomb, or else outside it nagging the Mujis to get the right wiring.
She was, in fac,t a humanitarian. Liberal or not, she was an American. God rest her soul.
Yeah, the terrorists. No other possibility if she spent 10 years working for Medea Benjamin. Nice pink head scarf she has.
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