Metro

Iraq? No, B’klyn!

Nigel Edinboroughís (
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This Marine survived a year and countless unseen bombs on the battlefields of Iraq — but was nearly blown to bits by an explosive parking spot in Brooklyn!

Death-dodging Crown Heights leatherneck Nigel Edinborough — who saw firsthand the powerful road side bombs in Iraq — nar rowly escaped parking hell yesterday when a manhole exploded beneath his SUV moments after he found an open spot.

“It was like back in Iraq,” said Edinborough, an eight-year military-veteran-turned-ironworker who returned from Iraq in 2005 after serving a year there.

His 2002 Ford Escape was incinerated less than two minutes after he hopped out at Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights at around 6:40 a.m.

“All I could think about was my wife and daughter — I could’ve been in that car,” said Edinborough.

The SUV, which Edinborough, 31, bought new and on which he had more than 87,000 miles, was torched along with his work tools, winter coat, pricey sound system and GPS after a series of manholes on the street exploded.

Last week, he and his wife, Peaches, had taken their week-old daughter, Nilah, to the doctor at around the same time of day, he said.

“She was really shook up,” he said about his wife’s reaction to his near-death experience. “She gave me a big hug.”

Edinborough said moments after he had moved the doomed Ford to its new parking spot, he headed back into his apartment building nearby.

The elevator was broken, and he was walking the five floors to his apartment when he heard a loud explosion.

“Before I got upstairs, I heard a loud boom,” he said.

He compared the sound to those he heard daily in Iraq, where roadside bombs are the scourge of military convoys.

“I didn’t pay it no attention, but then I heard helicopters overhead and firetrucks, and turned on the news and I saw a vehicle on fire that looked like mine,” he said.

By the time Edinborough raced back downstairs — just 15 minutes after he moved the SUV — it was simply a husk.

A spokeswoman for Con Edison said the power company responded to three manhole explosions on the block.

She believed the explosions could have been the result of melted snow and ice that had mixed with road salt to create electrically conductive runoff that shorted out several underground power boxes.