12-10-03 13:02
UPDATE 3-Central Baghdad blast kills at least 10
(adds details)
By Brian Williams and Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD, Oct 12 (Reuters) - A powerful car bomb killed at
least 10 people outside a central Baghdad hotel used by U.S.
officials on Sunday, injuring many and filling the air with
thick black smoke, police said.
Eyewitnesses said they saw a car crash through the security
barrier at the Baghdad Hotel and explode. The hotel is widely
thought to be used by members of the CIA, officials of the U.S.
-led coalition, their Iraqi partners in the Governing Council as
well as U.S. contractors.
A policeman at the scene said at least ten people had been
killed. Hotel employees said five or six bodies lay in the hotel
courtyard.
At a nearby hospital, a Reuters photographer saw more than a
dozen wounded, many seriously. Several were Iraqi policemen.
Sirens wailed as ambulances and fire engines rushed to the
scene. The lower floor of the building next door was on fire.
An Iraqi eyewitness said he saw a white car crash through
the security barrier.
"I saw a car coming towards the hotel. One of the guards
opened fire and it exploded," Nael Murkos said.
U.S. helicopters circled overhead minutes after the blast,
obscured by the thick smoke. Dozens of Iraqi police raced to the
scene.
Guests were seen leaving the hotel carrying suitcases. They
were uninjured but said their rooms had been destroyed.
Soldiers and plain-clothes officials in U.S. flak jackets
carrying AK-47 rifles swarmed the street outside the hotel.
"I was driving beside the hotel when a white car suddenly
crashed through the security barrier and exploded," Iraqi
eyewitness Sabah Ghulam said.
The blast shook windows several blocks away. It was the
latest in a series of attacks aimed at Western targets in Iraq,
which the U.S. blames on guerrillas resisting the U.S.-led
occupation.
On Thursday, two suicide bombers crashed their car through
the gates of a police station in northeast Baghdad, killing at
least eight other Iraqis.
Last month, a suicide car bomb attack outside the United
Nations headquarters in Baghdad killed a security guard. A bomb
was also detonated outside a hotel used by U.S. television
network NBC, killing a security guard.
In August, a suicide bomber crashed a truck packed with
explosives into the United Nations compound, killing 22 people
including the head of mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Earlier
that month, a car bomb outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad
killed 17 people.
((Writing by Fiona O'Brien, editing by Philippa Fletcher))
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