Bloodiest blast in Baghdad claims 11 lives

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed 11 people and wounded 57 when it exploded outside the Jordanian embassy here yesterday in Baghdad on Thursday, causing rage and panic in the bloodiest attack in the capital since Saddam Hussein was toppled four months ago.

Bodies, bandaged and caked in blood, were hauled out of ambulances on stretchers at the nearby Iskan children's hospital, amid the sound of wailing sirens and women shrieking.

Ahmad Kadun, in charge of the hospital's morgue, said the facility had received 11 bodies from the attack, two of which had been rapidly claimed by relatives for burial.

He said the hospital had treated 40 wounded, two of them in a serious condition.

A doctor at Baghdad's Yarmuk hospital said it had admitted 17 injured patients, six of them in serious condition.

A medical source said three Jordanian embassy staff had been transferred from Iskan to a Jordanian hospital at Fallujah, 5ghdad..

In Amman, Jordanian officials denied that any Jordanians had been killed. They said 15 people employeesd at the embassy had been hurt, but did not specify how many were Jordanian.

Charge d'affaires Demi Haddad was not in the embassy at the time of the attack, an official said.

Jordanian officials condemned the attack, which was not immediately claimed, as a cowardly act of terrorism.

Leaving the hospital, his head bandaged, police officer Hekmat Ibrahim said: "I saw a long vehicle approach the embassy. I heard a huge explosion. I was blown back and I fell unconscious."

Ibrahim, a guard at the embassy, said 16police were assigned to the Jordanian and nearby Tunisian embassies.

Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Nantz of the United States army's 82nd Airborne Division told reporters beside the scorched embassy walls thatsaid the attack "appeared to be a car bomb".

"What I know is a lot of Iraqis were killed," he added.

At least four vehicles were destroyed by the explosion, and an AFP correspondent saw crowds were extricating four blackened bodies from one of them.

A hole was blasted in part of the embassy's exterior wall and a guard post blown over.

Following the explosion, an angry crowd of Iraqis charged into the embassy and torestarted to tear the Jordanian flag and rippedrip up and burnt pictures of Jordan's 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." an AFP correspondent witnessed.

When US troops and Iraqi police arrived, about 30 minutes after the explosion, the crowd was forced out amid shouting.

But once back on the street, the crowd spotted a Jordanian embassy employee and started hurling stones at him.

Police escorted the employee to safety and US soldiers fired a warning shot, forcing the mob to disperse, and then preceded to cordon off the area with tanks.

Sentiment here has been heavily anti-Jordanian in the last week, since Abdullah's decision to grant asylum to Saddam's two daughters Raghad and Rana, who arrived in Amman last Thursday with their nine children.

Embassy employee Ansar Abu Ghazaleh said the Jordanians had been afraid of an attack but suggested another reason.

"We expected this because so many Iraqis here are trying to get visas into Jordan.

They are almost always rejected and leave the embassy vowing revenge," Ghazalah said, recalling that two Iraqis had stormed out the day before.

The attack appeared to be unconnected with the guerilla war between supporters of Saddam and the US army and the general criminal lawlessness in the city Baghdad.

"Jordan condemns this criminal, cowardly terrorist operation," Information Minister Nabil Sharif said in a statesment carried by Petra news agency.

The attack will, however, "reinforce Jordan's determination to help the Iraqi people achieve security and stability in Iraq," Sharif added. - Sapa-AFP