Baghdad bomb: Iraqis angry

2003-08-07 17:38

Baghdad - A car bomb blast outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad on Thursday brought chaos and devastation in its wake, killing at least 11 people, wounding more than 50 and unleashing an explosion of rage among local Iraqis.

The massive explosion just metres from the beige embassy building tore a five-metre hole in the compound wall and wrecked at least six cars, turning one into an unrecognisable frame of twisted metal which Iraqi police and the US military said was the likely source of the blast.

The most devastating single attack since the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein was declared over 99 days ago, killed 11 people and wounded 57, according to the director of the morgue at the Iskan hospital where most of the casualties were taken.

Two Iraqi police sources said several of the dead were local police.

Wounded and dazed people still lay on the ground about 15 minutes after the 11:00 explosion, and pools of blood covered parts of the asphalt road outside the embassy.

As some people struggled to extricate four charred bodies from a wrecked Chevrolet, dozens more stormed into the embassy to tear up Jordanian flags and smash and burn pictures of King Abdullah II and his father, the late King Hussein.

The crowd yelled curses against Jordan and Jordanians, saying "We want to kill them all."

US troops who arrived about 30 minutes after the explosion forced them out, but back on the street they spotted a Jordanian embassy employee and started hurling rocks at him.

Police escorted him to safety and US soldiers fired a warning shot to disperse the mob, before cordoning off the area with tanks.

Ambulance driver Sabakh Tahsin, 38, said a Jordanian security officer was seen shooting from the embassy at ambulances and other vehicles, which he thought were looters but were trying to evacuate the casualties.

Charred debris

Shortly afterwards US soldiers and investigators as well as Iraqi police were seen combing through the embassy and sifting through the charred debris out front for clues.

Ahmed Ali Jasim, a medic at Iraq's ministry of health, said they told him there were also two dead bodies on the embassy roof.

The massive blast shattered glass store fronts nearly a kilometre away and left the embassy heavily damaged.

Police guard Hekmat Ibrahim, 50, said he was lucky to be alive.

"I was standing at the corner of the adjacent alley when I saw a long vehicle pull up in front of the embassy," said Ibrahim as he emerged from the Iskan hospital after treatment for head wounds.

"Then there was a huge blast, which blew me backwards and knocked me unconscious."

A doctor, Nazar Nasser, said: "A driver stopped a vehicle in front of the embassy and ran away. There are too many injuries and dead bodies inside and outside the embassy."

Rumours raced through the crowd that a US helicopter had fired a missile at the car, but Lieutenant Colonel Eric Nantz of the US army's 82nd Airborne Division said there were no known US military in the area at the time.

At the Iskan hospital, bodies bandaged and caked in blood were hauled out of ambulances on stretchers, amid the sound of wailing sirens and women shrieking.

Why?

A mother wept beside the coffin containing her 20-year-old policeman son's body while her husband moaned, "Why Saddam, why?".

In the morgue bodies lay about in bags waiting for relatives to claim them for burial.

People shouting and crying ran in all directions quizzing doctors and nurses in the search for their loved ones, as staff tried desperately to instill some order.

Hospital chief Kassem Rahi said that of the 40 or so casualties admittted, 13 were seriously injured.

Three wounded staff members of the embassy left aboard two ambulances of the Jordanian Red Crescent, watched by Baghdad police chief General Ahmed Kadun.

"The target was the Jordanian embassy. People hear about how Iraqis are treated in Jordan and there is hatred," Jasim of the health ministry said.

Jordan's relations with Iraq have been strained, with Iraqi political parties voicing ire at Amman's lack of action during the war and the decision of King Abdullah to grant asylum to two daughters of Saddam.

Hundreds of Iraqis per day who apply for visas to Jordan get rejected, heaping more tension on the precarious relationship, Aysar Abu Gazaleh, a Jordanian national employed with the Palestinian mission in Baghdad, said. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA