Too had been hurled to the ground by the force of the explosion. A fraction of a second later, there was the clatter of thousands of tiny pieces of masonry cascading on to the asphalt roof like a burst of hail from the sky. I heard people screaming as horror gripped the journalists on the roof. An engineer ran out from one of the tents and pointed up towards the top of the hotel. "Oh, Jesus, they're just killing people now," he said. Something had struck the hotel. I knew instantly that it was the Reuters television office, as the wires ran from their 15th-floor offices down to their satellite dish next to ours. Paul came rushing out of the BBC tent to see if we were OK, then told us to get off the roof. He grabbed a medical trauma pack from the tent and ran towards the fire escape, which led into the main building of the hotel. There was panic and confusion in the lobby. People were screaming instructions to clear the area and I saw a limp body being carried in a bedsheet. I wanted to go to the Reuters office to see if any help was needed. There was a trail of blood running along the corridor to their suite. The door was open and I saw the Reuters TV bureau chief, Ahmed Self, screaming into the phone to their head office in London, trying to explain what had happened. There was a gaping, blackened hole where the doors to the balcony had been. Shrapnel and blast marks had shredded the wallpaper and ceiling. Taras Protyusk, the Reuters cameraman who had been filming the American tanks on the Joumhouriya bridge, lay in a pool of blood. The flesh of his stomach had been ripped apart. There was hysteria and anger and everyone was shouting. "Tear the fucking bedsheets off, he's going to bleed to death!" "No! No! We have to get him to hospital now, for God's sake ... Jesus Christ, somebody get a car. Lift him! Lift him!" I looked at Taras again. His stomach wasn't there. Just a dark, bloodstained cavity. A small number of photographers and cameramen were in the corner of the room, recording the scene. It was no different from what we had been doing in the city throughout the war. But at that moment it was too much and someone shouted at them to get out. We quickly recognised that there was nothing any of us could do for Taras, and that whatever faint hope remained for him lay in the hands of Iraqi surgeons. I stumbled down to the BBC office. We sat there, unable to understand what had just happened. The attack on the Palestine hotel by US forces had been beamed live around the world and Paul told us to phone our families immediately.

I gathered myself before calling Nina. It was just after lunchtime in Johannesburg and she was about to leave the house. Thankfully, she hadn't been watching the television. I kept saying to her that everyone in the BBC team was fine and well, that there had been "an incident close to the hotel" but that we were all OK. We talked briefly about everyday things: I said goodbye, and repeated again that we were all fine. Fifteen minutes later one of our closest friends phoned Nina. "Nina! He's OK, he's OK. Don't worry," she said. "I've seen Rageh on the TV where journalists were trying to help the others who had been wounded in the attack, but he's fine, he wasn't hurt." Nina realised why I had been repeating myself with such insistence. Three journalists were killed and two seriously wounded by American forces that day. The Coalition Central Command stated: "Commanders on the ground reported that coalition forces received significant enemy fire from the hotel and consistent with the inherent right of self-defence, coalition forces returned fire ... Sadly a Reuters and Tele 5 journalist were killed in this exchange. These tragic incidents appear to be the latest example of the Iraqi regime's continued strategy of using civilian facilities for military purposes." There was no fire from the hotel or anywhere near it. At least five television networks recorded continuous footage in the half-hour before the American tank fired its single round into the hotel [and] at least 20 reporters were on the lower roof of the Palestine hotel 15 minutes before the tank fired. There was no trace, either in our personal recollections or on the audio footage, of gunfire in or near the hotel. That night was one of the longest of my life. We continued to do live broadcasts from the roof until it got late, but it was difficult to concentrate. I would look into the still darkness of Baghdad's streets and the pitch-black sky, imagining that I could hear the sound of a tank engine or aeroplane. I felt more vulnerable than ever and I couldn't wait for those broadcasts to end. The atmosphere was one of aching sorrow and deep guilt. Dozens of pressmen gathered for a brief candlelit service to remember our colleagues who had died that day. Many of us had simply come to the end of our emotional strength. Before I went to bed I frantically rearranged my room, moving the bed into the far corner, as far away from the balcony as possible. I took my flak jacket off when I finally lay in bed, unable to sleep. Even then I kept it by my side.

The day the statue fell

We followed the marines on the 10-minute drive to Firdoos Square, where for the next two hours the world's attention would be focused. Banks of television cameras had lined up along the edge of the roof of the hotel to broadcast live pictures of the US entry into the square. About 100 Iraqis had emerged from the apartment blocks on the edge of the roundabout into Firdoos Square. One young man climbed up the plinth and clutching the statue by the ankles, shouted down to the rest of the crowd. They whistled and yelled up at the effigy in voices full of hatred. Fifteen minutes later a man emerged from the crowd with a rope. He threw it up to the youth at the foot of the statue, who had now been joined by two others. With the small crowd urging them on, they tried to tie it round the statue, but couldn't manage it. I was beneath them, trying to talk into the satellite phone and describe what I was witnessing. At first the Americans didn't join in. Then something happened to change their minds: they realised they might be missing a photo opportunity. A commander signaled for a vehicle used to transport battle tanks to move into the centre of the square to help pull down the statue. A cheer rose from the crowd as metal tracks churned and crushed the concrete steps leading up to the plinth. A huge metal chain was dragged out of the belly of the vehicle as the mechanical crane on its nose was raised towards the statue. Incredibly, one of the marines unfurled the American flag and draped it over the face of Saddam Hussein. It was a breathtakingly ill-judged act. Miraculously, an old Iraqi flag dating from the era before the Ba'ath party appeared. The hapless marine climbed the crane again to replace the US flag. Another loud cheer went up. With a shudder the tank transporter started to reverse, the metal noose around the statue's neck becoming taut as it did so. Saddam Hussein's metal legs buckled. One last pull and it came crashing down, bouncing and scraping along the concrete floor as the crowd surged around it. I tried to cling to the phone as I was pushed and crushed in the melee, shouting out descriptions of the wild ecstasy around me. It was a fleeting, blissful moment. Yet the statue was not the most important statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Its prominence came about because of where it stood, across the road from the hotel where the press was based. The falling statue was the first real image that allowed the British and US governments to believe that their hopes of an ecstatic welcome had at last come to pass, and that all the fears of a breakdown in civil order were behind them. They were soon to discover that this was only the beginning. · To order a copy of Revolution Day by Rageh Omaar for £15.99 (RRP £17.99) inc UK p&p, call the Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979. Published by Viking.