Violence returned to the streets of Baghdad with a vengeance yesterday when at least 11 people were killed in a massive car bomb explosion outside the Jordanian embassy, leading to fears that guerrilla fighters may now be turning their attention towards so-called soft targets.
Several US soldiers were injured in a firefight in the capital’s shopping district. It also emerged that two American servicemen were killed in a gun battle on Wednesday night, after almost five days of relative calm in the city.
Witnesses said the bomb had been planted in a minibus that pulled up in front of the embassy moments before the explosion, which ripped through the compound just before 11am local time.
It was unclear last night exactly how the bomb was detonated. The Jordanian authorities were reported to be claiming a missile had been fired at the minibus to set off the device.
Some people at the scene claimed to have seen a helicopter fire a missile, but the reports have not been verified.
Hospital and morgue officials said those killed in the blast included two children and a woman, while the Jordanian consul, who suffered serious leg and internal injuries, was among the more than 50 people injured.
In the aftermath of the blast, young Iraqi men stormed the building, ripping down pictures of Jordan’s King Abdullah and his late father, King Hussein. They shouted anti-Jordanian chants and burned the pictures in the street before being dispersed by US forces and Iraqi police, who descended on the scene in force.
Some witnesses claimed they were reacting to Jordanian security staff who had allegedly opened fire on Iraqis who were trying to help the injured on the street below.
Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, said the attack on the embassy was the ”worst on a soft target” since Baghdad fell to American forces on April 9. But it was unclear last night who was responsible.
Jordan is in the unusual position of being disliked by both supporters of Saddam Hussein and those who were against his regime.
The kingdom supported the invasion by US-led forces and allowed American troops to be stationed in the desert close to the border. It has intimated that it might be willing to send troops to Iraq.
But many Iraqis are also angry at what they see as the years of support the government in Amman gave to Saddam, and the decision last week by King Abdullah to give two of Saddam’s daughters political asylum.
Jordan said yesterday that the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, had telephoned its foreign minister, Marwan al-Muasher, after the explosion to offer support.
”Mr Powell emphasised Washington would provide the necessary protection to the embassy, its staff and Jordanian interests in Iraq, and would open a full investigation to arrest the people who planned and executed this terrorist attack,” a foreign ministry source said.
After the explosion burning cars lay strewn across the road in front of the embassy. Four Iraqis who were driving past when the bomb went off were burnt beyond recognition.
Hikmet Ibrahim (50) an Iraqi police officer who was guarding the embassy, was injured in the blast, but returned to the scene later with a bandage wrapped around his head.
He said he had been standing outside the front of the building with four of his colleagues when a minibus pulled up.
He had not noticed anybody getting out, but seconds later it exploded, killing all four of his fellow officers. The force of the blast was so strong it blew a car on to the roof of the next-door building, while houses and cars across the street had their windows blown in. Debris was found more than half a mile away.
A Sudanese man who worked as a waiter at the embassy said many of the 30 people inside the building had been injured by shockwaves. Karim Shushan, the consul, suffered a broken leg and was treated for internal injuries, according to Ahmed al-Bakri, a doctor at the Yarmuk hospital.
As plainclothes US investigators began examining the scene, a brown leather shoe, its back pushed down so it could be worn like a slipper, lay in the middle of the road. It was impossible to know if its owner was among the bodies that lay in the small morgue next to a children’s hospital, a few blocks from the embassy, where relatives gathered to collect their dead.
One of those killed was Mohammed Saad (23) a police officer from the Huriya district of Baghdad. His wife Dunia, who is five months’ pregnant, went to the morgue to identify the body.
The bombing is a double blow to the US-led coalition as it came just as the security situation in Iraq appeared to be getting better, with senior coalition officials saying privately they hoped the back of the armed opposition had been broken.
But after four days of relative calm, during which no American servicemen were killed in Iraq, central command announced yesterday that two soldiers had died on Wednesday after a gun battle in the Rashid district of the capital.
A firefight also broke out in the city centre yesterday, with US soldiers firing into a two-storey building after their Humvee came under a grenade attack in a busy street. Witnesses said two US soldiers in the vehicle had been injured. – Guardian Unlimited Â