A suicide car bomber killed six Iraqis on Sunday in a huge explosion at one of Baghdad’s most heavily guarded hotels where CIA teams, American contractors and senior Iraqi officials were staying.
The lunchtime blast, which rocked the Iraqi capital, was the latest in a series of devastating bombings over the past six months that have claimed nearly 200 lives, most of them Iraqi civilians.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq has been shaken by 84 major attacks, and countless smaller incidents and acts of sabotage, that have transformed America’s promise of rapid reconstruction into an increasingly bloody guerrilla war.
Resistance fighters have grown more sophisticated and more daring. On Sunday several witnesses said two cars were involved in a coordinated attack on the high-security Baghdad Hotel.
In the aftermath, a huge fog of black smoke rose over the city, while several bodies lay in the courtyard of the hotel.
The explosion, Baghdad’s second car bomb in four days, tore chunks out of the buildings on either side of the entrance and shattered windows hundreds of metres away.
Baghdad Hotel is some distance from the main road and a concrete blast wall at the street entrance protected the hotel itself from serious damage. Most of the dead appeared to be Iraqi guards, stationed at the barricaded entrance. At least 30 others were hurt, including Mouwafak al-Rabi, one of several members of Iraq’s governing council who lived in the hotel. He suffered minor injuries to his hand.
The hotel is also home to American contractors, and CIA operatives are also understood to be using it as a base.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator of Iraq, said the bombing was the work of terrorists trying to disrupt America’s reconstruction effort.
”They will do anything, including taking the lives of innocent Iraqis, to draw attention away from the extraordinary progress made since liberation,” he said. ”The terrorists will not succeed.”
But worsening security has hindered attempts to restore the electricity supply and restart government, and continues to keep away aid agencies and foreign investors. It may also have irreparably shaken many Iraqis’ faith in America’s promise of a prosperous, progressive new Iraq.
In the past two months alone there have been six suicide car bombings that have made innocent deaths an increasingly familiar tragedy.
On Sunday, US Blackhawk helicopters and F-15 fighter jets circled above the scene of the blast as scores of ambulances ferried away the injured.
Ghaith al-Qaisi, who runs a photo shop almost opposite the Baghdad Hotel, said he saw two cars approach.
”The two cars came from opposite sides at the same time,” he said. ”The first car got behind the concrete wall and the guards were shooting at it before it exploded. A few seconds later a second car came from the other side and exploded just by the concrete wall.”
He said the street was busy with pedestrians, many queuing to use a nearby bank or to apply for jobs with the hotel security force.
Iraqi security guards had set up sandbagged positions at either end of the concrete wall, about 100 metres from the hotel itself. Several sections of the wall were knocked over by the force of the explosion.
Shopkeepers nearby said the hotel had received written threats in the past month because of the US presence in the building. Iraqi police made regular patrols past the entrance and an US Bradley fighting vehicle had been driving up and down the street on Sunday before the attack.
Few in the street appeared to have any sympathy with the bombers.
”What had they done, those innocent people who died today?” said Majid Salih, the owner of another photo laboratory close to the hotel. ”How stupid to believe that by doing this you will go to paradise. They only succeeded in killing other Iraqis.”
One of his employees who was inside the shop at the time suffered cuts from flying glass. ”Anyone could see that there is a long distance between the main gate and the hotel building,” Salih said. ”There was no way they could reach the hotel without getting stopped.”
The Americans’ main political and military headquarters in Baghdad are inside one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces. A vast security perimeter of concrete blocks and barbed wire has been set up miles away from the building.
Many Iraqis working with the US forces are still vulnerable. Last month Aqila al-Hashimi, one of only three women on the governing council, was shot outside her home and later died. – Guardian Unlimited Â