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Baghdad car bomb kills at least 17, scores injured

A powerful car bomb destroyed a five-story hotel housing foreigners in central Baghdad on Wednesday night, killing 17 people and leaving a jagged crater just days before the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. US soldiers and Iraqi rescuers stopped searching for survivors yesterday in the wreckage of a five-story hotel and surrounding buildings after a massive suicide bombing. The US military had said 27 people died, but later revised the toll downward to 17.

US Army Colonel Jill Morgenthaler confirmed the attack was a suicide bombing, but said the destroyed Mount Lebanon Hotel may not have been the intended target because the vehicle loaded with explosives was in the middle of the street, and not parked in front of the hotel.

Flames and heavy smoke shot skyward, igniting trees and nearby buildings as rescuers pulled bodies from the rubble and searched for other victims. Dazed and wounded people stumbled from adjacent buildings. A father cradled his young daughter, who was limp in his arms. Coated in dust, some rescuers dug with bare hands as ambulance workers stood by with orange stretchers.

The bomb, containing an estimated 1,000 pounds of explosives, also wounded 45 people at the Mount Lebanon Hotel, said US Army Colonel Ralph Baker.

Americans, Britons, Egyptians as well as other foreigners were staying at the hotel, said Baghdad resident Faleh Kalhan. Many casualties were in adjacent buildings.

The blast set afire at least eight cars, one of which was hurled into a store. Some vehicles were little more than mangled piles of metal. The explosion blew bricks, air conditioners, furniture and other debris hundreds of yards from the hotel.

"It was huge boom followed by complete darkness and then the red glow of a fire," said 16-year-old Walid Mohammed Abdel-Maguid, who lives near the hotel. A two-story complex of offices and shops was also badly damaged.

The Mount Lebanon was a so-called soft target because it did not have concrete blast barriers and other security measures of the kind that protect offices of the US-led coalition and other buildings where Westerners live and work.

Brigadier General Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the 1st Armored Division said he did not believe Iraqis linked to Saddam Hussein's Baath party were behind the attack. Those former regime members are believed to be focusing attacks on US soldiers.

"We're going after the extremists in Iraq and the extremists coming from outside Iraq," Hertling said.

"It's just so frustrating," he said. "You take three steps forward and something like this happens and you take one step back."

Hertling said that as part of citywide raids Wednesday, US troops arrested two Arabic-speaking foreigners with suspected connections to extremist groups who were in a house a block from the Mount Lebanon Hotel. He said they were not suspects in the bombing.
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