World

Bombers Target Baghdad Hotel

October 25, 2005 / 6:36 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Suicide bombers including one in a cement truck packed with explosives launched a dramatic attack Monday against the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists are based, sending up a giant cloud of smoke and debris over central Baghdad. American troops and journalists escaped without serious injury but at least a half-dozen passers-by were killed.

The deafening attack triggered confusion and panic throughout the hotel, and sent cars swerving wildly on a roundabout to escape the blasts. Inside the 19-story hotel, the force of the blasts shattered glass, tore pictures off walls and brought down light fixtures and ceilings.

CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports that

the attacks came in a series (video).

The cement truck was the last of three vehicles trying to break through the wall outside the hotel. The first car drove up to the wall and exploded, blasting out a section of the concrete. According to the U.S. military, the second car was headed for the fresh breach in the wall but exploded near the 14th Ramadan Mosque when it was engaged by civilian security forces.

Within minutes, the truck made it through the breach but apparently became stuck on a road between the Palestine and the neighboring Sheraton hotel. Had the truck traveled 20 or 30 yards farther and blown up at the hotel entrance, it could have killed many people inside the Palestine.

Dozier reports the

attack took place in the famous square (video)

where Saddam's statue was toppled the day Baghdad fell and occurred at dusk just as Iraqis would have been breaking the daylong fast they observe during the holy month of Ramadan and eating their first meal, called Iftar. It could have been an effort to catch Iraqi security forces at a vulnerable moment when they might have been less attentive.

Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said the attack — which appeared well planned — was a "very clear" effort to take over the hotel and grab foreign and Arab journalists as hostages. He offered no evidence to support the claim.

Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal disputed the kidnapping theory.

"There is no evidence to support this," Kamal said. "This is just an unlikely assumption. If that were the case, then there would have been gunmen with the suicide bombers. There were no gunmen."

Casualty reports varied widely. The U.S. military said six civilians were killed and 15 wounded, but al-Rubaie said at least 20 were killed and 40 wounded, mainly passers-by on the street. Kamal said four or five police officers were among the dead. Two AP employees and three other journalists inside the hotel suffered minor injuries.

No American troops were wounded, the military said. A U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle parked inside the compound was destroyed in the blast, but no one was inside at the time. But the toll among American service members killed in the Iraq war reached 1,997 with the announcement of a Marine killed Sunday during fighting in western Iraq.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the indiscriminate killings had been carried out in the name of a "totally perverted ideology."

"It is a further illustration of the evil that we are dealing with," Straw said.

In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement condemning the bombings.

"These appalling attacks are fresh reminders of the myriad dangerous facing those who continue to report from Iraq," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said.

In related developments:

A suicide car bomber killed two Iraqis and wounded five others in an attack on a police patrol in Baghdad on Monday. The car, which was located in the northeastern neighborhood of Shaab, was apparently detonated by remote control. The Shaab neighborhood is the same area where insurgents kidnapped and murdered a defense lawyer in Saddam Hussein's trial last week.

In another development, the U.S. military on Sunday confirmed that four American contract workers were killed and two wounded in Iraq last month when their convoy got lost.

On Monday an unknown gunmen shot dead an Iraqi official in Saydieyeh neighborhood, in southwest Baghdad. The victim was identified as Mohammed Ali Nu'ma, Secretary of Director of al-Mansour Municipality.

In Fallujah, west of Baghdad, an insurgent blew up his car next to a U.S. humvee on Sunday night. A vehicle could be seen engulfed in flames.

In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded at 8:30 a.m. near a car carrying Ibrahim Zangana, a senior member of Iraq's Kurdish Democratic Party, seriously wounding him and killing one of his bodyguards, said Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir, the commander of Kirkuk's police force.

Insurgents opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Baghdad, killing a soldier and a girl who was standing in front of her nearby house, said police 1st. Lt. Thaeir Mahmod.

Insurgents also fired mortar rounds that set fire to an oil pipeline in northern Iraq, wounding two Iraqi soldiers, said soldier Hussein Ghadban Al Ubaidi. The pipeline is one of many that link an oil field in Kirkuk to Iraq's largest oil refinery in Beiji. Such attacks in the north are common.

On Sunday, an investigative judges took testimony from the first witness in the Saddam Hussein mass murder trial regarding the 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail. The judges went to a military hospital to take the deposition from Wadah Ismail al-Sheik, a cancer patient who was director of the investigation department at Saddam's feared Mukhabarat intelligence agency at the time of the Dujail massacre. Al-Sheik is too sick to appear in court, and officials did not want to wait until the trial resumes Nov. 28 to get his testimony.

The corpses of eight Iraqis — five men and three women — were found in three different areas of Baghdad on Monday, police said. All of them apparently had been kidnapped, tied up or handcuffed, and shot to death.