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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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 Tue Aug 19, 2003 10:10 am U.N. Headquarters in Baghdad Bombed |
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| Quote: | Update: (Reuters) -- At least 10 people were killed and dozens wounded in the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, said a U.S. military officer on the scene. Several victims are still under the rubble, the officer said.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Aug. 19) - A car bomb collapsed the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding dozens, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, who was trapped in the rubble.
There was evidence to suggest the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was the work of a suicide bomber, a top U.S. official said. The two deaths were reported by a hospital.
''There was an enormous amount of explosives in what we believed to be a large truck. It may have been a suicide bomber. There's evidence to suggest it,'' Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, told reporters.
At nearby al-Kindi Hospital Dr. Munas Amer said at least two people, both Iraqis, were killed in the blast and at least 25 other people were brought in for treatment.
A U.N. driver said he saw Iraqis and foreigners injured in the wreckage of the Canal Hotel, where the U.N. is based. An Associated Press reporter could see 40 wounded people lying in the front garden and receiving first aid.
Sgt. Amy Abbott said the 4:30 p.m. blast was caused by a car bomb. She said military ambulances and security forces were at the scene. She said she did not yet have casualty figures and did not know if anyone had been killed.
''Sergio Vieira de Mello's office was destroyed and Sergio himself was hurt,'' U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York. ''I can confirm that he is trapped in the rubble.''
Eckhard said he didn't know how seriously Vieira de Mello, 55, was hurt.
The U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, Salim Lone, said dozens were wounded. Eckhard said he couldn't confirm any deaths.
A senior UNICEF official also was seriously wounded in the blast, U.N. officials said.
One wounded man had a yard-long, inch-thick aluminum rod driven into his face just below his right eye. He was able to speak and identified himself as a security consultant for the International Monetary Fund, saying he had just arrived in the country over the weekend.
Nazar Hababa, the U.N. driver, was covered in blood as he recounted seeing victims in the rubble.
''At 4:30 p.m. we heard a big explosion. It was caused by a rocket, said Adnan Al-Jabouri, a second U.N. driver at the hotel.
The force of the blast, which knocked out windows up to a mile away from the scene, destroyed several cars, including one that was on fire.
Lone informed U.N. headquarters in New York that a number of people were hurt in the explosion, but no one was killed as far as he knew.
He said the explosion destroyed a significant part of the building, Eckhard said.
Dozens of U.S. Humvees were at the scene and at least two Black Hawk helicopters hovered above. Black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air.
United Nations weapons inspectors worked out of the hotel during the period before the war.
''My house shook like it did during the bombing at the start of the war,'' a resident in the area around the hotel said.
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.
The United States failed to win the backing of the U.N. Security Council before it invaded Iraq on March 20, and since major fighting ended in April, the United States has been reluctant to let the United Nations play a large role in rebuilding the country.
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.
AP-NY-08-19-03 1040EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. |
Last edited by Theresa on Fri Sep 12, 2003 8:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Jeff Miller
Fleet Admiral
Joined: 22 Nov 2001
Posts: 23947
Location: Mental Ward for the Mentaly Unstable 6th floor, Saint John's 1615 Delaware Longview Washington 98632
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| Tue Aug 19, 2003 10:12 am |
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Our people are constantly being attacked (SP) every day we are losing more soliders than we did during the war. Im starting to think that Sadam is still in power.
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| ~Tony Montana wrote: | | You know what you need people like me people for you to snub your nose at and point at saying there is a bad man. Well guess what This bad man is leaving. Say goodnight to the BAD MAN! |
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Thomas
Pool Princess
Joined: 08 Jul 2001
Posts: 19730
Location: Manchester
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| Tue Aug 19, 2003 10:28 am |
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The people carrying out these attacks are as twisted as Saddam himself. It is sad that there are still people out there still willing to fight for him, for whatever reason. 
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Gloss rhymes with hair!
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Tue Aug 19, 2003 1:20 pm |
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| Quote: | BAGHDAD, Iraq (Aug. 19) -- A suicide attacker set off a truck bomb 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 only days away from 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 U.N. workers were killed and 100 wounded. A survey of Baghdad hospitals by The Associated Press found five other people killed.
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 about whether the truck was parked or trying to drive through the security barrier.
An Associated Press 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, who was on leave from his post as the U.N. commissioner for human rights, began a four-month assignment in Baghdad in June and had said his mission was ''to make sure that the interests of the Iraqi people come first'' in rebuilding their country.
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.
''That will have a serious impact on our work in Iraq, as well as forcing us to reassess the security risk of working in Iraq. Against that, of course, we have the very strong determination by the council not to be deterred by this attack,'' he said.
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 the deadly 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 about 4:30 p.m. 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 arrived with Lt. Gen. Richardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and members of the Governing Council, including Adnan Pachachi who had served as foreign minister in the Iraqi government that was overthrown in the 1968 Baath Party coup.
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 mood was panicky at U.N. headquarters in New York. Officials and employees gathered around television sets hoping for news on colleagues in Baghdad.
The U.N. Security Council called the blast a ''terrorist attack.''
''Members of the council were shocked to hear of the terrorist criminal attack in the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad,'' said deputy Syrian ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose country holds the Security Council presidency.
The U.N. Security Council was briefed about the bombing at a closed-door meeting. 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.
Mekdad 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 the bombing of the Jordanian embassy and recent suspected sabotage of Iraq's main northern oil export pipeline into Turkey, where a fire still raged.
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.
Most people in Baghdad had water service Tuesday after saboteurs blew an enormous hole in a 5-foot-diameter water main in the north of the city.
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 1405EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. |
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Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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Jeremy
J's Guy
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 7823
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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| Tue Aug 19, 2003 2:14 pm |
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I've only heard a little at the moment about it, but it sounds bad. And the only thing they're doing is setting back the develpoment of the country, so british, american and the other UN countries involved stay longer, as well as killing inocents
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Zefram Cochrane
Commodore
Joined: 18 Sep 2002
Posts: 1257
Location: Stafleet outpost 9876965 (aka Aberdeen,Scotland)
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| Thu Aug 21, 2003 12:43 pm |
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These "pockets of resistance" have got to be recieving orders from somewhere.
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Jeremy
J's Guy
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 7823
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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| Fri Aug 22, 2003 2:24 pm |
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I've heard that theres thousands of muslims crossing the borders to attack the americans. Al-Quida is also supposed to be helping.
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