- BAGHDAD (AFP) -- Five Iraqis
plus a suicide bomber were killed when a powerful car bomb tore off the
front of a hotel in central Baghdad.
-
- "Five Iraqis, (plus) the driver of the van were
killed," a coalition spokesman said Wednesday, adding that between
400 pounds and 500 pounds (200 kilograms and 250 kilograms) of explosives
were used in the attack.
-
- There was "extensive damage to the ground floor
of the hotel," he said, confirming witness reports that vehicle was
either an ambulance or had been painted "with a red crescent to look
like an ambulance."
-
- Iraqi police and US military officials had previously
said the blast which tore the front off the Shahine hotel and damaged a
nearby police post in the capital's upmarket Karrada district had killed
three people.
-
- Another coalition spokesman said a Briton and an undetermined
number of Iraqis were wounded.
-
- Medics at Baghdad's Ibn Nafis hospital earlier said 11
people were injured.
-
- There was no confirmation of earlier police reports that
a South African employee of a security firm was among the dead.
-
- The hotel was used by Iraq's interim labour minister
Sami Azara al-Majun, as well as foreign businessmen and the South African
security firm.
-
- Lieutenant Hussein Ali, the chief of police patrols in
Karrada, said the bomb was concealed inside the vehicle which drove up
to the hotel at high speed.
-
- "According to testimonies we received, an ambulance
arrived very quickly in front of the hotel," he said.
-
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-
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afp/20040128/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_baghdad_blast_toll_040128164559
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