Four South Africans were injured and one was killed in a car bomb in Baghdad in Iraq on Wednesday morning, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.
Departmental spokesperson Nomfanelo Kota said three of the injured men were treated for minor lacerations and the fourth one sustained serious injuries.
“At the moment we are still trying to verify their names and that of the deceased man,” she said. “His identity will be released once his next of kin have been informed.”
Kota said more developments would be revealed later on Wednesday afternoon.
Five Iraqis and a suicide bomber were among those who were killed when the car bomb tore off the front of the Shahine hotel in central Baghdad on Wednesday morning. Earlier on Wednesday it was reported that four people were killed, among them a South African man.
The bomb exploded in front of the hotel, which is frequented by Westerners. A military spokesperson in Baghdad said the attacker had been driving an ambulance packed with up to 500kg of explosives.
The blast destroyed the front of the hotel building, which is located in the residential area of Masbah, beside a police station and directly beside a building that, until 1991, served as the United States embassy and later as the Polish embassy.
The hotel itself was used by the Polish secret service and foreign businessmen.
Most of the guests were still in the hotel at the time of the blast. US military forces sealed off the area and rescuers were searching for people trapped in the rubble.
Several cars were also burnt out in the blast.
Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa told the Mail & Guardian Online on Wednesday: “We sympathise with the families of the deceased and wish those who were wounded by the explosion a speedy recovery.”
Mamoepa did not know how many South African companies were operating in Iraq.
Iraqi Interim Minister of Work and Social Affairs Sami Izara al-Majoun, who lived in the hotel, was getting ready for his morning prayers when a loud explosion shook his room at about 6.50am and the building was filled with smoke. He was unhurt.
“My guards came to the room and rushed me downstairs. The hotel was burning and there was fire and smoke everywhere,” he reportedly said.
Wednesday’s explosion follows a series of attacks on Tuesday that claimed the lives of six US soldiers, two Iraqi police officers and two Iraqi employees of the US television news channel CNN.
Three US soldiers died in Khaldiya, 90km west of Baghdad, as explosives detonated under their vehicle.
Two Iraqi policemen were killed as insurgents used machine guns to attack a checkpoint in Fallujah, 70km west of Baghdad.
The two CNN employees, a driver and an interpreter, died as an assailant shot them in their vehicle in Mahmoudiya, 25km south of Baghdad.