This is very sad both for Marla's family and the people of Iraq, she was one of the Americans actually doing some good in Iraq.
Marla Ruzicka, a longtime peace activist and the founder of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), was killed in a car bombing on April 16. She was 28.
Born and raised in Lakeport, Calif., Ruzicka became interested in humanitarian issues in high school. Although she technically resided in New York City, Ruzicka rarely spent much time in the United States. Instead, she
traveled around the world and tried to alleviate the suffering she encountered.While studying for her bachelor's degree in political science and social work at Long Island University, Ruzicka volunteered with Global Exchange in the Middle East, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Zimbabwe and Nicaragua. As a young adult, she worked on AIDS issues in Africa, protested the U.S. embargo in Cuba and visited Afghanistan to survey the needs of refugees affected by America's "war on terror."
In 2003, Ruzicka founded CIVIC, a non-profit organization
dedicated to identifying and addressing the needs of civilian war casualties. The day after the statue of Saddam Hussein toppled in Baghdad, she set up a CIVIC office in the capital city and launched a door-to-door survey of Iraqi civilian casualties.Ruzicka and more than
150 volunteers viewed scenes of destruction and carnage as they documented the war's collateral damage. Their work, which was publicized in dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and in the 2003 book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson, inspired Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to create a special fund in the foreign aid bill to help innocent Iraqis who were harmed in the military operations.
Ruzicka was traveling near Baghdad International Airport on Saturday to visit an injured Iraqi child when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of security contractors that was passing near her vehicle. An Army officer who arrived on the scene shortly after the bomber struck said Ruzicka was still alive and conscious with burns over 90 percent of her body when the car became engulfed in flames. Ruzicka, her Iraqi driver Faiz Ali Salim, and a guard on the convoy died in the blast. Five other people were wounded.
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