Car bombs kill 15 near Baghdad hotels

BAGHDAD - Three suicide bombers staged a co-ordinated attack on a Baghdad hotel complex used by foreign journalists today, killing at least 15 people, police said.

The co-ordinated attack, at dusk in front of rolling television cameras and guaranteed global media coverage, broke a relative lull in insurgent violence over the past two weeks.

Witnesses and police said at least one of the first two bombers slammed a car into defences around the concrete towers of the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, blasting a path for a third in a cement truck; it exploded beside a US Bradley armoured vehicle on guard duty, sending up flame and smoke.

There were no initial reports of US military casualties, a US military spokesman said. Recent media reports have focussed attention on the fact that the US death toll in Iraq is just three short of the headline figure of 2,000.

A US military statement gave a different account, saying a combination of rockets and car bombs targeted the hotels.

The explosions, spaced over several minutes as Iraqis broke their daily Ramadan fast, made for instantly replayed footage for cameras, which were trained on the area after the first blast and hence perfectly placed for subsequent detonations.

There was widespread superficial damage in the Palestine hotel - windows and doors were shattered as dust filled buildings nearby. A 2kg (5lb) piece of blackened, jagged metal the size of a dinner plate landed, among many smaller pieces, outside the Reuters bureau 500 metres (yards) away.

At least 15 people were killed and 11 wounded, police sources said. Other police officials gave differing figures.

US commanders have been warning in recent weeks of attacks in Baghdad designed to draw media attention to the insurgency. Among scenarios they have described include storming a guarded compound with bombs and gunmen to take hostages and kill them.

Iraq had been relatively calm despite expectations that Sunni Arab militants would step up violence during a referendum on a U.S.-backed constitution and the trial of former President Saddam Hussein last week.

Two Sunni provinces have returned resounding "No" votes on the charter, officials confirmed on Monday, and its fate could rest with voters in a volatile region in the north.

Iraq's electoral commission head Hussein Hendawi told reporters on Monday that in the Sunni Arab province of Anbar, heartland of the insurgency, 96 per cent voted "No" according to preliminary results.

The sentiment was the same in Salahaddin province, where Saddam's hometown of Tikrit is located. Voters there registered an 81 per cent rejection of the charter. Final results are expected within the next two days.

SWING PROVINCE

Nineveh, with Iraq's third largest city Mosul as its capital, is seen as a swing province that could determine the fate of the charter, which has deepened sectarian divisions.

Under Iraqi law, the draft constitution will be struck down if two-thirds of voters in three provinces reject it.

Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders, who drew up the charter, are hoping it will unite Iraq and defuse the insurgency of suicide bombings and shootings aimed at toppling the US-backed government.

Leaders of the Sunni minority, once dominant under Saddam, are fiercely opposed to the constitution, fearing it will give Shi'ites and Kurds too much power and oil resources.

Although violence eased considerably during the October 15 referendum and the opening of Saddam's trial four days later, the results of the poll threaten to boost sectarian tensions that have raised fears of civil war.

Low-level attacks on security forces, police and anyone associated with US troops continue.

Gunmen killed 12 Iraqi construction workers on Monday in an attack in the town of Mussayyib, south of Baghdad, police said.

A police source said the attackers also kidnapped the contractor who had hired the workers to build a police station.

Iraqi police found the bodies of six Iraqis, three of them women, bound and blindfolded, with gunshot wounds to their heads and chests, near the volatile town of Latifiya, just south of Baghdad, police said on Monday.

Violence has also pushed up US military deaths closer to the psychological mark of 2,000.

A US Marine was killed by small arms fire during combat operations in Ramadi on Sunday, the military said on Monday. That raised the number of US military deaths in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion to 1,997.

- REUTERS