BREAKING NEWS: Huge blast in Baghdad

[vtbub]

CNN showing a huge fire. Reuters says it's a hotel, several dead.

[vtbub]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A powerful blast ripped through a Baghdad hotel and neighboring houses Wednesday evening, killing several people, Reuters journalists at the scene said.

Correspondent Luke Baker said several bodies were being pulled out of the rubble of the hotel.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

[sachmo71]

I think it may be terrorists.

[The Afoci]

I blame gumby.

[rkmsuf]

A flubber experiment gone awry?

[KevinNU7]

Powerful blast rocks Baghdad
Wednesday, March 17, 2004 Posted: 12:29 PM EST (1729 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- -- A massive explosion shook the Karada district of Baghdad on Wednesday night.

Video from the scene showed several fires burning in the area of the explosion and several people could be seen searching through rubble.

A large cloud of smoke could be seen rising over the area.

The cause the blast was not immediately known.

The blast follows a series of recent attacks.

Three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi children were wounded Wednesday by an improvised explosive device in south-central Baghdad, a military source told CNN.

The children and a soldier were evacuated to combat hospital, where they were treated for shrapnel injuries. Two other soldiers have returned to duty.

A mortar attack Tuesday night killed a child and wounded eight, believed to have been playing in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood, an Iraqi official said Wednesday.

Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Ahmed Kadhim said the mortar hit a building that had been a Baath party office, and is now used by an unidentified political party.

Also Tuesday, a rocket struck the grounds of a secondary school in Baghdad's Al-Karkh region, killing one person and wounding four, Iraqi police said.

Baghdad University students Wednesday attended the funeral of the assistant dean of the school of engineering. They told CNN's Jane Arraf that Marwan al-Hiti was shot and killed near his home Tuesday night.

A 3rd Armored Cavalry soldier died Wednesday when he was traveling in a convoy in Iraq en route to Kuwait for redeployment, U.S. Central Command said.

The soldier was injured badly when a passing vehicle struck his tank and was evacuated to a combat support hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Iraqi leaders seek U.N. advisers
Iraqi leaders have reached an understanding with the United Nations, asking for advisers to help them put together an interim government before the June 30 political handover, a British diplomat said Wednesday.

British Ambassador to the U.N. Emyr Jones Parry said the Iraqi Governing Council is planning to bring back U.N. experts to help devise the government that will get power in a handover.

A U.N. electoral team recently was in Iraq to explore the feasibility of direct elections for a transitional assembly before the June deadline that would choose a government to be in charge at the time of the handover.

The team concluded that such elections were not logistically possible and the council started thinking about the shape of a caretaker government for the sovereignty period. One idea is expanding the 25-member council and extending its authority through the year.

The United Nations removed its international staff from Iraq after its Baghdad headquarters was attacked in August.

[Suicane75]

I blame gumby.

It's really fucked up of you to make a joke in a time like this. Gumby would never do something like this.

[sachmo71]

Someone is going to blame Spain for this...

[vtbub]

CNN confirms car bomb.

[AlejandroSosa]

so... how long before Kerry blames this one on Bush?

[Franklinnoble]

I blame Janet Jackson.

[The Afoci]

I blame Janet Jackson.

Nipple rings can be deadly.

[vtbub]

More from AP:

Deadly Explosion Destroys Baghdad Hotel
Email this Story

Mar 17, 12:53 PM (ET)

By JIM KRANE

(AP) Smoke rises following a large explosion in central Baghdad Wednesday March 17, 2004. (AP...
Full Image

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A large explosion destroyed a hotel in central Baghdad on Wednesday night, and rescuers pulled bodies from the rubble. Witnesses said it was a bomb blast.

Two U.S. soldiers tried to help pull bodies from the wreckage, but angry Iraqis pushed them back.

Flames shot skyward, and heavy smoke rose behind a central square from the area of the blast. Trees were on fire, and flames jumped to nearby buildings. Eight cars were on fire, and one vehicle was hurled by the blast into a store.

Ambulances raced to the scene. Two U.S. soldiers tried to help pull bodies from the wreckage, but angry Iraqis pushed them back.

(AP) U.S. soldiers inspect the site of an explosion that wounded five in Baghdad Wednesday March 17...
Full Image
The blast shook the nearby Palestine Hotel, where many foreign contractors and journalists are based. The explosion occurred behind Firdaus Square, where a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein was felled April 9 with the help of U.S. Marines who had just entered the center of the Iraqi capital.

The area of the blast, Karrada, is a mix of residential and commercial buildings.

Earlier Wednesday, the Iraqi Governing Council asked the United Nations for help putting together a new government, a council spokesman said.

The council requested that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan send a U.N. team back to Iraq to help organize a government that would take over from the U.S.-led coalition June 30, council spokesman Hamid al-Kafaai told The Associated Press.

The letter sent by council president Mohammed Bahr al-Ulloum, a Shiite cleric, also requested technical assistance in preparation for a general election due by the end of January 2005.

(AP) US soldiers secure the site of an explosion that wounded five in Baghdad Wednesday March 17 2004....
Full Image
"The Governing Council has asked that the United Nations offers advice to Iraq in the field of elections and the formation of a transitional government," al-Kafaai said.

The United States has urged a U.N. role in the U.S.-backed political process for Iraq, and coalition spokesman Dan Senor welcomed news of the invitation.

The announcement of the invitation, decided in a council meeting Wednesday, followed remarks to reporters by Bahr al-Ulloum's deputy that Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric and his supporters on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council were unhappy with a U.N. report last month that found Iraq unready for elections ahead of June 30.

Sami al-Askari said several council members did not think the return to Iraq of U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi would be helpful and that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani would not receive him if he returned.

"It is not Brahimi's personality, but some members have some reservations about the contents of his report and believe his return at the head of a U.N. delegation will hinder" the U.N. role in Iraq, said al-Askari.

(AP) Iraqi homeless children take part in a demonstration held outside the Coalition Provisional...
Full Image
Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, was in Iraq last month at the head of a team of U.N. experts to investigate whether elections could be held before June 30. In a report, he said such a vote was not feasible, giving reasons long cited by Washington - no electoral structure, no reliable census and an untenable security situation.

At a news conference, al-Askari said: "His Eminence al-Sistani and many Shiites are unhappy with the report that the United Nations and Lakhdar Brahimi issued because it gives a lopsided picture of realities and facts, and paints a picture of a sectarian problem in Iraq."

Al-Askari was accompanied by Ahmad Chalabi, a powerful Shiite council member who said the council had agreed on the text of a letter to the United Nations. But Chalabi, who opposes Brahimi's return, said only that the letter recognized the expertise of the United Nations in the field of elections.

Also Wednesday, U.S. and Iraqi military forces launched a large operation to weed out insurgents and seize illegal weapons, with troops, helicopters and armored vehicles raiding a suspected arms market in the capital.

The raid on the suspected arms market came during a week in which gunmen, in two separate attacks, killed two Europeans and four American missionaries working on water projects. The six killings suggest the insurgents are going after civilians to undermine reconstruction efforts.

(AP) Residents check the destruction of a home Wednesday March 17 2004, after explosions in a crowded...
Full Image
The operation that began Wednesday - called "Iron Promise" - was expected to involve thousands of U.S. troops from the Fort Hood, Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, which has recently arrived in Iraq, and the outgoing Germany-based 1st Armored Division. Scores of Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers were also involved.

In the first raid, about 250 troops from the armored division's 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment as well as 250 Iraqi soldiers fanned out across the sprawling 20th Street Market, in the city's Al-Bayaa district, which sells everything from vegetables to used car parts.

In one car repair shop, U.S. troops found a pair of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and burlap sacks full of grenades. They arrested three men.

Some stores are suspected of supplying weapons to the rebels, said the raid's commander, Lt. Col. Chuck Williams, 40, from Sterling, Va. He said the market assault was the start of a citywide crackdown on the guerrillas.

"There is a lot of pressure everywhere. It is all over town. The big things we are looking for is people moving weapons, IED (improvised explosive device) materials and explosives and ammunition. Our soldiers are looking to deter or discover this activity. We want to shut it off," he said.

In the latest example, a homemade bomb exploded in central Baghdad Wednesday, wounding a U.S. soldier and two Iraqi security personnel as they patrolled the area, U.S. Army Col. Peter Jones said.

Also Wednesday, insurgents used dynamite to attack an overpass on the main highway leading from Baghdad to Jordan, causing it to partly collapse and block one side of the road, witnesses said.

The highway is regularly used by U.S. military convoys and allows them to avoid the adjacent service road that runs through Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities in the so-called Sunni Triangle, a hotbed of anti-coalition activity. U.S. troops come under repeated attacks whenever they pass through the two cities.

---

Associated Press reporter Hamza Hendawi contributed to this report from Baghdad.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities in the so-called Sunni Triangle, a hotbed of anti-coalition activity
Now let me see ... where did I put that bullseye paint?

[sabotai]

I blame the ACLU and the feminists and the pagans and the atheists and the gays and the abortionists...

Oh I'm sorry, wrong forum.