Many Casualties Reported in Baghdad Hotel Blast

March 17, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 17 — A massive explosion ripped through an area in Baghdad today, causing many casualties, witnesses said. The blast caused severe damage to an apartment building and a hotel, the Mount Lebanon, in the al Karada district of Baghdad, and it sent a massive fireball shooting up, lighting the night sky.

Col. Ralph Baker, commander of the Second Brigade of the Army's First Armored Division, said 27 people were killed and 41 injured. Although there were differing reports on whether the explosion was caused by a car bomb or a rocket, Colonel Baker said it was most likely a car bomb.

The explosion gouged a crater 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide in front of the hotel. Hundreds of people packed the street around the bomb crater and the burning hotel as clouds of sparks crackled in the air. Generators, oil drums and power lines were one fire. People in bloody clothes fought through the masses in front of them as they carried injured and dead out of the building — sometimes on stretchers, other times in their arms.

People dug through the rubble with their hands. At a hospital near the site of the blast, injured people were covered in blankets. Gurneys were covered in blood, and the sirens of ambulances wailed.

A waiter at the hotel said the lobby had collapsed.

Heider Abbas, a 24-year-old car washer, said he was drinking tea down the street when the explosion happened and ran into the burning building. "I carried seven bodies out and three people who were badly hurt," Mr. Abbas said. "There were many other people screaming for help. Some were trapped under the rubble, others had been badly burned. I saw some bodies that were completely black. There was fire everywhere."

He was one of dozens of people who were picking through the still-flaming rubble minutes after the explosion happened.

Several ambulances rushed to the scene with the drivers shouting over their loudspeakers: "Don't bring us the dead people. We can't help them. Bring us the injured."

Two ambulances that tried to leave the scene were quickly surrounded by an angry crowd that blocked the streets as men shouted: "You can't leave now. There are children buried inside."

Crowds of Iraqis gathered at the site. Some of them expressed anger at insurgents who have launched attacks in Iraq, calling on the Americans to crack down on the insurgency.

Dozens of American soldiers cordoned off the streets, shouting at people to "move, move, move" and pointing their guns at anybody who did not.

One bystander, Faiz Sadeh, a 28-year-old construction worker, criticized the American soldiers for not doing enough to help. "Why are you blocking us from rescuing our people?" Mr. Sadeh shouted at the soldiers. "Can't you do more to help than just shout at us and push us away?"

Iraqi police were also holding back crowds at the blast site and at the hospital.

One of the Iraqis, Zaki Mohammad, 31, said of the people behind the attack: "They have to hang these people as criminals in front of the people in the city of Baghdad."

"Long live U.S.A.," said Ali Mohammad, a 36-year-old Iraqi graduate student and friend of Mr. Mohammad. "We support the U.S.A."

Qahcan Shukur, the owner of a furniture factory, said he was standing across the road when the explosion occurred. "I was just standing here," he said. "It was unbelievable."

He added: "All this shattered glass and junk from over there came all over me. It's impossible that this was done by Iraqi people. Iraqi people don't kill civilians."

He then turned his wrath on Americans, saying: "Why don't Americans maintain security? Why don't they keep us safe?"

Dexter Filkins provided reporting from Baghdad for this article.