Car bomb kills 20 outside main US base in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber blew up a car laden with half a ton of explosives outside the main US headquarters in Baghdad last night, killing at least 20 people and wounding about 60 as they waited to enter the base.

The attack in the heart of the Iraqi capital came a day before a key meeting in New York between the United Nations, Iraq's Governing Council and US and British officials on the political future of the country.

The bomb exploded right outside the main entrance to the "Green Zone," formerly Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace complex in Baghdad and now the top-security civilian and military headquarters of the US-led administration.

Colonel Ralph Baker, a US military spokesman, said a pickup truck packed with 454 kg of explosives was detonated outside the gate, which the Americans call the Assassins Gate.

Cars were on fire in the street after the blast and victims lay on the ground in pools of blood. A stream of ambulances ferried away the wounded through thick early-morning mist.

US Army spokesman Captain Jason Beck said 20 dead and 29 wounded were brought to a US hospital. Two of the dead were US Department of Defence employees but he did not immediately know their nationalities.

The wounded included six Americans -- three soldiers and three civilians, he said.

Doctors said about 30 people with various injuries were brought to other hospitals, all Iraqi civilians.

A Reuters Television cameraman saw a woman lying in the road, one foot blown off and a high heeled shoe still on the other. Other victims lay slumped on the kerb or in the middle of the road.

An Iraqi soldier helped lift a body from the street, pausing briefly as a gunshot rang out in the background.

A spokesman for the US 1st Armored Division said a vehicle exploded after joining a queue of vehicles waiting to enter the base, which is heavily guarded by US troops.

Many of the victims were workers who had lined up waiting to be searched, said one witness.

"I was passing by when the explosion happened," said Wissam Muhammad Shaker, speaking in Arabic. "People were thrown aside, three here, five there. The dead people were workers."

Sunday is a working day in Iraq and the bomb went off just after 8am when many people would have been on their way to office. Most of the victims were employees waiting to enter the Green Zone.

CAKED WITH BLOOD

At the nearby Yarmouk Hospital, more than a dozen people were admitted with bomb blast injuries. At least one man was taken in on a stretcher, his body covered in blood and a transfusion bottle held above him by an attendant.

"I can't hear you, I can't hear," cried Raqad Iyas Ibrahim, sitting on a bed with her head bandaged and blood congealing across her face.

"I saw a car, I really don't know what happened, I saw windows smashing, then I just fell. I don't know, I don't understand," she said, breaking down in sobs.

Insurgents battling US occupation regularly attack the US military and those they see as cooperating with them.

The last major attack in the capital was a car bomb which went off outside a major city restaurant on New Year's Eve, killing at least eight people and wounding 30.

On Saturday, a roadside bomb near a town about 30km north of Baghdad killed three US soldiers and two Iraqi civil defence officials who had been patrolling in a Bradley armored vehicle.

The deaths took the number of US troops killed in Iraq since last year's invasion to 500, a mounting problem for President Bush in the months before he seeks re-election in November.

After talks with Bush in the White House on Friday, Iraq's US governor, Paul Bremer, reiterated that the US-led authority would hand over political power on June 30 to a transitional Iraqi government selected by regional caucuses.

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most senior cleric in Iraq's majority Shi'ite community, has demanded that elections be held before the handover, but Bremer said that would be difficult.

He meets UN Secretary General Kofi Annan along with members of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council on Monday in a bid to enlist his support in persuading Sistani to accept a compromise. The top British envoy to Iraq will also be present.

Annan however is likely to be cautious about returning to Iraq. He pulled out international staff from the country in October after attacks on relief workers and the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19 that killed 22 people, including the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Annan has also wanted the UN role in Iraq clarified, clearly wanting to avoid merely rubber-stamping US policy.

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq