truthaddict11
20th August 2003, 00:12
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Aug. 19) -- A suicide attacker set off a truck bomb on Tuesday outside the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters, U.S. officials said. At least 20 U.N. workers and Iraqis were killed, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, and 100 were wounded.
Sergio Vieira de Mello, a 55-year-old veteran Brazilian diplomat who was nearing the end of his four-month mission, was in his office when the explosion ripped through the building about 4:30 p.m. and was trapped in the rubble.
U.N. officials said 15 people were killed and 100 wounded. A survey of Baghdad hospitals by The Associated Press found 20 people killed, including 14 U.N. workers.
Vieira de Mello's death was announced by U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, and all the national flags that ring the U.N. headquarters' entrance in New York were removed from their poles. The blue and white U.N. flag was lowered to half staff.
U.N. staffers gathered in corridors, on the promenade facing the East River and around television sets as they mourned the loss of the man Eckhard called ''a rising star.''
According to two witnesses, a cement truck exploded at a concrete wall outside the Canal Hotel, where the U.N. was based, but there were conflicting reports about whether the truck was parked or trying to drive through the security barrier.
An AP reporter counted 40 wounded people lying in the front garden and receiving first aid. Some were loaded into a helicopter while others were led away by soldiers.
''I can't move. I can't feel my legs and arms. Dozens of people I know are still under the ruins,'' Majid Al-Hamaidi, 43, a driver for the World Bank, cried out.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, told reporters that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing.
''There was an enormous amount of explosives in what we believed to be a large truck,'' Kerik added.
Asked if al-Qaida was behind the attack, Kerik said, ''It's much too early to say that. We don't have that kind of evidence yet.''
Vieira de Mello reluctantly took leave from his post as the U.N. commissioner for human rights to take the Iraq assignment, the toughest in the United Nations, at Annan's request. He began work June 2 and would have finished his assignment at the end of September, though the U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, Salim Lone, said many U.N. officials wanted him to stay on.
A senior UNICEF official also was seriously wounded in the blast, U.N. officials said.
''It's a personal loss for all of us, but it's also a political loss because the secretary-general sent into the most difficult job that the U.N. has anywhere in the world now one of the most talented people that we have on the U.N. staff,'' Eckhard said.
He said the attack would force the United Nations to reassess the security risk of working in Iraq but he stressed the Security Council would not be deterred.
Asked if al-Qaida was behind the attack, Kerik said, ''It's much too early to say that. We don't have that kind of evidence yet.''
Eckhard said the United Nations depended on the U.S.-led coalition for security of the building.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in Baghdad that the truck did not breach the security wall that was erected around the hotel within the past month. He said it was parked on an access road just outside the compound. Witnesses said it was uncertain if the truck was parked or trying to break through the barrier.
The official estimated the amount of explosives was double that used in the attack on the Jordanian embassy almost two weeks ago in which 19 people were killed.
The embassy attack was thought to be the first such terrorist-style bombing in the Iraqi capital since Saddam Hussein's fall.
President Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, condemned Tuesday's truck bombing, calling the attackers ''enemies of the civilized world.''
''These killers will not determine the future of Iraq,'' Bush said. ''Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime.''
Like the Jordan bombing, the attack - a vehicle bomb, a high-profile target with many civilians inside - resembled attacks blamed on Islamic militant elsewhere in the world. It was far more sophisticated than the campaign of guerrilla attacks that has plagued U.S. forces, featuring hit-and-run shootings carried out by small bands or remote control roadside bombs.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's blast.
Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the attack fits ''the ideology of al-Qaida. They consider the U.N. one of the international actors who helped the Americans to occupy Palestine and, later, Iraq.''
The blast occurred while a news conference was under way in the building, where 300 U.N. employees work.
A light blue U.N. flag fluttered atop the compound as black smoke rose from at least one burning car after the explosion. One corner of the building was missing and people were seen sifting through piles of rubble.
L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, walked through the scene of destruction as workers dug through the rubble with their hands trying to find people. There was a 15-yard wide hole in the ground.
Bremer had tears in his eyes and hugged Hassan al-Salame, an adviser to Vieira de Mello. A part of the building collapsed near him. People cried: ''Watch out. Watch Out.''
''We will leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators of this attack,'' he said.
People, covered with blood, were still being pulled from the wreckage.
The U.N. Security Council, which was briefed about the bombing at a closed-door meeting, called the blast a ''terrorist attack.'' U.S. diplomats were pushing for the council to adopt a statement condemning the bombing.
Several countries denounced the attack. Russia's Foreign Ministry called the explosion a ''barbaric act'' and said it was ''aimed at undermining the already difficult process of postwar stabilization in Iraq,'' the Interfax news agency reported.
Among the dead was a Canadian who died at Wasiti Hospital, Dr. Safa Jamil said. The Canadian was not identified. The Danish Foreign Ministry said a Dane was among the U.N. workers injured.
One wounded man had a yard-long, inch-thick aluminum rod driven into his face just below his right eye. He identified himself as a security consultant for the International Monetary Fund, saying he had just arrived in the country over the weekend.
Several members of the U.S. Congress were in Baghdad touring military sites when the explosion happened - and were scheduled to tour the U.N. facility sometime later in the day. None was hurt.
Dozens of U.S. Humvees were at the scene and at least two Black Hawk helicopters hovered above.
Deputy Syrian ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose country holds the Security Council presidency, said ''such terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the international community'' and that U.N. programs would continue.
The United Nations distributes humanitarian aid and is developing programs aimed at boosting Iraq's emerging free press, justice system and monitoring of human rights. United Nations weapons inspectors worked out of the hotel during the period before the war.
The Canal Hotel operates more as an office building than a hotel. The cafeteria is a popular place for humanitarian workers and journalists to meet. U.S. officials often were at the compound as well for discussions with their U.N. counterparts.
The three-floor building houses the offices of most U.N. agencies with the exception of UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Before the war, it was home to U.N. weapons inspectors who have hundreds of documents there and a mobile testing lab in the hotel parking lot.
The attack on the U.N. headquarters followed recent suspected sabotage of Iraq's main northern oil export pipeline into Turkey, where a fire still raged, and a bombing of a water main in Baghdad.
Accounts varied over whether the blaze was accidental or an act of sabotage. It would take at least 10 days to repair the damaged pipeline once the fire is extinguished, U.S. military officials said.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq announced that Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Iraqi vice president known as ''Saddam's knuckles'' for his ruthlessness, was turned over to U.S. forces in the northern city of Mosul.
Ramadan, 65, was captured Tuesday by Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and the Arab satellite television station Al-Jazeera said he was disguised in peasant clothes. The former vice president was once considered Iraq's second-most powerful man, but his influence had declined. He was No. 20 on the U.S. most-wanted list of former regime figures.
The U.S. military on Tuesday also reported another attack on U.S. forces. Assailants driving alongside an ambulance for cover fired on soldiers in one of Saddam's palaces on Monday night, a military official said. No soldiers were injured.
AP-NY-08-19-03 1532EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press
Sergio Vieira de Mello, a 55-year-old veteran Brazilian diplomat who was nearing the end of his four-month mission, was in his office when the explosion ripped through the building about 4:30 p.m. and was trapped in the rubble.
U.N. officials said 15 people were killed and 100 wounded. A survey of Baghdad hospitals by The Associated Press found 20 people killed, including 14 U.N. workers.
Vieira de Mello's death was announced by U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, and all the national flags that ring the U.N. headquarters' entrance in New York were removed from their poles. The blue and white U.N. flag was lowered to half staff.
U.N. staffers gathered in corridors, on the promenade facing the East River and around television sets as they mourned the loss of the man Eckhard called ''a rising star.''
According to two witnesses, a cement truck exploded at a concrete wall outside the Canal Hotel, where the U.N. was based, but there were conflicting reports about whether the truck was parked or trying to drive through the security barrier.
An AP reporter counted 40 wounded people lying in the front garden and receiving first aid. Some were loaded into a helicopter while others were led away by soldiers.
''I can't move. I can't feel my legs and arms. Dozens of people I know are still under the ruins,'' Majid Al-Hamaidi, 43, a driver for the World Bank, cried out.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, told reporters that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing.
''There was an enormous amount of explosives in what we believed to be a large truck,'' Kerik added.
Asked if al-Qaida was behind the attack, Kerik said, ''It's much too early to say that. We don't have that kind of evidence yet.''
Vieira de Mello reluctantly took leave from his post as the U.N. commissioner for human rights to take the Iraq assignment, the toughest in the United Nations, at Annan's request. He began work June 2 and would have finished his assignment at the end of September, though the U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, Salim Lone, said many U.N. officials wanted him to stay on.
A senior UNICEF official also was seriously wounded in the blast, U.N. officials said.
''It's a personal loss for all of us, but it's also a political loss because the secretary-general sent into the most difficult job that the U.N. has anywhere in the world now one of the most talented people that we have on the U.N. staff,'' Eckhard said.
He said the attack would force the United Nations to reassess the security risk of working in Iraq but he stressed the Security Council would not be deterred.
Asked if al-Qaida was behind the attack, Kerik said, ''It's much too early to say that. We don't have that kind of evidence yet.''
Eckhard said the United Nations depended on the U.S.-led coalition for security of the building.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in Baghdad that the truck did not breach the security wall that was erected around the hotel within the past month. He said it was parked on an access road just outside the compound. Witnesses said it was uncertain if the truck was parked or trying to break through the barrier.
The official estimated the amount of explosives was double that used in the attack on the Jordanian embassy almost two weeks ago in which 19 people were killed.
The embassy attack was thought to be the first such terrorist-style bombing in the Iraqi capital since Saddam Hussein's fall.
President Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, condemned Tuesday's truck bombing, calling the attackers ''enemies of the civilized world.''
''These killers will not determine the future of Iraq,'' Bush said. ''Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime.''
Like the Jordan bombing, the attack - a vehicle bomb, a high-profile target with many civilians inside - resembled attacks blamed on Islamic militant elsewhere in the world. It was far more sophisticated than the campaign of guerrilla attacks that has plagued U.S. forces, featuring hit-and-run shootings carried out by small bands or remote control roadside bombs.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's blast.
Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the attack fits ''the ideology of al-Qaida. They consider the U.N. one of the international actors who helped the Americans to occupy Palestine and, later, Iraq.''
The blast occurred while a news conference was under way in the building, where 300 U.N. employees work.
A light blue U.N. flag fluttered atop the compound as black smoke rose from at least one burning car after the explosion. One corner of the building was missing and people were seen sifting through piles of rubble.
L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, walked through the scene of destruction as workers dug through the rubble with their hands trying to find people. There was a 15-yard wide hole in the ground.
Bremer had tears in his eyes and hugged Hassan al-Salame, an adviser to Vieira de Mello. A part of the building collapsed near him. People cried: ''Watch out. Watch Out.''
''We will leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators of this attack,'' he said.
People, covered with blood, were still being pulled from the wreckage.
The U.N. Security Council, which was briefed about the bombing at a closed-door meeting, called the blast a ''terrorist attack.'' U.S. diplomats were pushing for the council to adopt a statement condemning the bombing.
Several countries denounced the attack. Russia's Foreign Ministry called the explosion a ''barbaric act'' and said it was ''aimed at undermining the already difficult process of postwar stabilization in Iraq,'' the Interfax news agency reported.
Among the dead was a Canadian who died at Wasiti Hospital, Dr. Safa Jamil said. The Canadian was not identified. The Danish Foreign Ministry said a Dane was among the U.N. workers injured.
One wounded man had a yard-long, inch-thick aluminum rod driven into his face just below his right eye. He identified himself as a security consultant for the International Monetary Fund, saying he had just arrived in the country over the weekend.
Several members of the U.S. Congress were in Baghdad touring military sites when the explosion happened - and were scheduled to tour the U.N. facility sometime later in the day. None was hurt.
Dozens of U.S. Humvees were at the scene and at least two Black Hawk helicopters hovered above.
Deputy Syrian ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose country holds the Security Council presidency, said ''such terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the international community'' and that U.N. programs would continue.
The United Nations distributes humanitarian aid and is developing programs aimed at boosting Iraq's emerging free press, justice system and monitoring of human rights. United Nations weapons inspectors worked out of the hotel during the period before the war.
The Canal Hotel operates more as an office building than a hotel. The cafeteria is a popular place for humanitarian workers and journalists to meet. U.S. officials often were at the compound as well for discussions with their U.N. counterparts.
The three-floor building houses the offices of most U.N. agencies with the exception of UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Before the war, it was home to U.N. weapons inspectors who have hundreds of documents there and a mobile testing lab in the hotel parking lot.
The attack on the U.N. headquarters followed recent suspected sabotage of Iraq's main northern oil export pipeline into Turkey, where a fire still raged, and a bombing of a water main in Baghdad.
Accounts varied over whether the blaze was accidental or an act of sabotage. It would take at least 10 days to repair the damaged pipeline once the fire is extinguished, U.S. military officials said.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq announced that Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Iraqi vice president known as ''Saddam's knuckles'' for his ruthlessness, was turned over to U.S. forces in the northern city of Mosul.
Ramadan, 65, was captured Tuesday by Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and the Arab satellite television station Al-Jazeera said he was disguised in peasant clothes. The former vice president was once considered Iraq's second-most powerful man, but his influence had declined. He was No. 20 on the U.S. most-wanted list of former regime figures.
The U.S. military on Tuesday also reported another attack on U.S. forces. Assailants driving alongside an ambulance for cover fired on soldiers in one of Saddam's palaces on Monday night, a military official said. No soldiers were injured.
AP-NY-08-19-03 1532EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press