As you drive towards Sochi along the road, you have to go through a huge concrete checkpoint in the tiny hamlet of Magri, around 60 miles (100 km) short of the city centre.
Among the dead were children, civilians, members of Iraqi security forces and members of the American-financed armed groups known as the Awakening Council, who were in charge of the nearby checkpoint beside the huge state-owned refinery, Iraqi security officials said.
Less unusual were the huge traffic jams at the checkpoints controlling access to government offices, big hotels and the main shopping centre: an alert was on for a car bombing or suicide attack and every vehicle was searched by soldiers or scruffy militiamen in camouflage trousers and T-shirts.
Anyone was welcome, huge trucks barreled through the checkpoints, they could be carrying anything.
THE four-hour journey through the bush from Kano to Jos in northern Nigeria features many of the staples of African life: checkpoints with greedy soldiers, huge potholes, scrawny children in football shirts drying rice on the road.
It resulted in a huge police and military presence, with checkpoints and magnetometers at the entrance of almost any place an Olympic athlete, official or spectator might visit, including competition sites, downtown hotels, even public plazas for nightly entertainment.
Soldiers at a checkpoint in Luhanske, where a huge Ukrainian flag was draped across the side of what was once a cafe, said although there had been isolated incoming mortar fire overnight, everything was quiet on Thursday.
In these circumstances, cells with mutations allowing proliferation in the absence of functional telomeres and regardless of checkpoint activation would possess a huge selective advantage, which ultimately leads to cancer.
The aid officials urged both the US and militiamen to guarantee goods and supplies swift passage through the myriad security cordons and makeshift checkpoints in parts of the huge, impoverished Shia district.
"I arrived a block away from the checkpoint by taxi, and suddenly there was a huge explosion," said Basil Zachariah, an Iraqi translator for the occupation administrators.
