A massive car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy in the Iraqi capital on Thursday morning, killing between seven and 12 people, according to rescue workers and an official at a nearby hospital.
About 52 people were injured, many of them seriously.
Shortly after the blast, young Iraqi men stormed the embassy gate and began destroying pictures of Jordan’s King Abdullah II and his late father, King Hussein. They were shouting anti-Jordanian slogans, but were quickly dispersed by United States forces and Iraqi police.
The Jordanian consul, Karim Shushan, was among the wounded, said Ahmed al-Bakri, a doctor at the Yarmuk hospital. Shushan suffered a fracture of the right leg and right thigh and was also treated for internal injuries, al-Bakri said.
Hussein Kubar, a doctor at a nearby childrens’ hospital, said six Jordanians were wounded.
The bomb was believed to have been planted in a minibus parked outside the walled embassy compound and detonated remotely. Many cars were gutted and two bodies were seen still sitting in the vehicles.
The chassis of the minibus landed on top of three of the burned out cars. One mangled vehicle could be seen on top of a building next to the embassy.
An American tank was parked outside the embassy compound on the western edge of Baghdad. Soldiers in armoured vehicles and Humvees cordoned off the area.
“I was sitting in the reception. I heard the first explosion, I ran out and then there was another explosion. Many employees were inside the embassy as well as Iraqis and Jordanians. Smoke filled the street,” said Shaheed Mazloum (50), an Iraqi guard at the embassy, who was treated at the al-Kharkh hospital.
Mandoh Gaahi, who witnessed the explosion, said the blast shook buildings and broke windows hundreds of metres away.
A Sudanese man working as a waiter at the embassy said about 30 people inside heard the explosion and many of them suffered minor injuries from the shock of the blast. He was bleeding from the left side of his face.
One wall of the embassy compound was blown down, revealing a generator, also apparently destroyed in the blast.
In Jordan, Information Minister Nabil al-Sharif condemned the “cowardly terrorist attack. This criminal act will only boost our determination to continue our support for the brotherly Iraqi people,” he said. Tensions between the neighboring countries have been high because of Jordan’s support for the US-led war on Iraq.
While Jordan is a major entry point into Iraq and remains a large trading partner, many Iraqis are resentful that Jordan dropped its support for Saddam Hussein after the 1991 Gulf War, and allowed US troops to use its soil as a base during the latest war.
King Abdullah II last week granted “humanitarian asylum” to two daughters of Saddam, whose husbands took refuge in Jordan but were lured back and killed by Saddam’s regime in 1996.
Later on Thursday, a fierce gun battle broke out in central Baghdad, with soldiers firing into a two-story building after their Humvee came under rocket-propelled grenade attack. The US vehicle could be seen burning. At least eight Humvees were at the scene.
There was heavy machine gun and automatic rifle fire. Two helicopters hovered above.
One soldier was seen being evacuated from the firezone. An Associated Press reporter at the scene said US forces stormed the building and emerged about five minutes later carrying their comrade. It was not immediately known if the soldier had been killed or just wounded.
Before taking the building, the military allowed about 20 civilians inside to come out with their hands in the air. Some carried white handkerchiefs. After the soldiers attacked, the building began burning and was gutted.
Also on Thursday the US Central Command announced two soldiers were killed on Wednesday night in the Al Rashid section of Baghdad. Their translator was wounded. The military said the soldiers died in a firefight but gave no other details.
The deaths ended a four-day period in which no US forces had been killed. The incident brought to 55 the number of US troops killed in combat since May 1, when President George W Bush declared major fighting over.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, told a news conference the attack on the Jordanian embassy was “the worst on a soft target” since Baghdad fell to American forces on April 9.
Elsewhere, US forces captured four suspected leaders of the anti-US resistance in pre-dawn raids on Thursday, the military said, a day after the Americans netted 18 suspected Saddam loyalists and found a huge stockpile of weapons.
In Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, the US military said one of the four Iraqis captured on Thursday allegedly organised cells and paid and armed guerrilla fighters for attacks on US forces in the town.
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell of the 4th Infantry Division, which carried out the raids, said two former Iraqi generals suspected of organising guerrilla attacks nationwide and an additional suspected Fedayeen militia ringleader were also captured. Russell declined to name any of them, but said one of the leaders was known as “The Rock”.
An AP reporter on the scene said one raid began as Apache attack helicopters circled overhead and about 100 soldiers backed by four battle tanks surrounded a hotel.