Bombs Rock Central Baghdad
Witnesses say a major explosion shook central Baghdad Friday morning - near the Interior Ministry building where U.S. troops last Sunday found as many as 173 malnourished detainees, some of them reported to appear to have been tortured.
Police Maj. Raeid Mohamedawi said two car bombs were detonated in a residential area behind the Interior Ministry building, which is also near a hotel used by U.S. journalists. Authorities believe the Hamra Hotel was the target.
At least six people were killed by Friday morning's bombs and at least 43 others were injured. Several residential buildings collapsed from the blast, which left a large crater.
The blasts in the Jadiriyah neighborhood reverberated through the city center, sent a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into the air and was followed by the sounds of sporadic small arms fire.
"What we have here appears to be two suicide car bombs (that) attempted to breach the security wall in the vicinity of the hotel complex and I think the target was Hamra Hotel," U.S. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst told reporters at the scene.
The deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal said the heavily fortified hotel appeared to be the target, with the first bomb designed to breach blast walls protecting the Hamra.
If true, it would be the second attack against a hotel housing international journalists since the Oct. 24 triple vehicle bomb attack against the Palestine Hotel, where numerous journalists for U.S. news organizations live and work.
Saad al-Ezi, an Iraqi journalist with the Boston Globe, said from inside the Hamra hotel that it was clearly the target.
"They were trying to penetrate by displacing the blast barriers behind the hotel and then get to the hotel," he said. "I woke up to a huge explosion which broke all the glass and displaced all the window and doors frames. I didn't see a lot of casualties among the clients but I saw one of the hotel's security official seriously injured and evacuated to the hospital."
A Hamra security officer says there were "some casualties" among guests but he did not say if they were journalists.
U.S. Army engineering units were sent to the scene to help in the rescue effort. At least one family is believed to be buried in the rubble and rescue workers are hoping to find them alive.
Five people in another family were rescued after part of their house collapsed. The mother had serious burns because she was in the kitchen; the father and three children suffered shrapnel wounds.
In other recent developments:
Thursday, Iraq's Shiite interior minister accused critics of exaggerating reports of torture at the lockup seized by U.S. troops last weekend, saying inmates included both Shiites and Sunnis and only a handful showed signs of abuse.
The Sunnis are the group that authorities primarily suspect in the insurgency in Iraq.
In a statement Thursday, the U.S. Embassy said Iraqi authorities have given assurances that they will investigate the conditions of detainees found Sunday night and that the abuse of prisoners "will not be tolerated by either the Iraqi government" or U.S.-led forces anywhere in the country.
A Pentagon official tells CBS News the Iraqi running the facility where the detainees were found last weekend is a former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and was complicit in the abuse and torture. The official calls it a mess the Iraqi government doesn't need.
Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said that a number of those detained are suspected foreign terrorists, including one man accused of building six car bombs.
"These are the most criminal terrorists who were in these cells," Jabr said. He said he personally instructed that these particular suspects be taken to the detention center in Jadiriyah because they were considered the most dangerous.
He said that an investigation was underway into the torture allegations, about which he held talks with the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey.
"I reject torture and I will punish those who perform torture," Jabr said. "No one was beheaded, no one was killed."
Jabr said only seven detainees showed signs of abuse "and the people behind the beatings will be punished according to the law."
CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports U.S. officials fear that Iran is backing armed groups inside the Iraqi government, running death squads killing hundreds of mostly Sunni men.
Most of the detainees are believed to be Sunni Arabs, prompting Sunni politicians to demand an international investigation. Sunni leaders, who have long complained of sectarian abuse by Shiite-led security forces, accused the government of trying to intimidate them from voting in the Dec. 15 parliamentary election.
Shiites and Kurds dominate the government's security services, while most of the insurgents are Sunni Arabs.
U.S. officials who have been briefed told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin that they're worried the abuse scandal could undo all the progress that's been made to bring the various factions into the political process.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, told reporters that U.S. troops, led by U.S. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, went to the facility because a 15-year-old boy was believed to be held there illegally.