Hotel suicide bomber may have hit wrong target

A terror attack on a five-storey Baghdad hotel which left 17 people dead was a suicide bombing and may have hit the wrong target, the US military said today.

At least 45 people were wounded in the bomb attack on the Mount Lebanon Hotel in the heart of Baghdad. One of the dead and one of the wounded were British.

US Army Colonel Jill Morgenthaler confirmed the attack was a suicide bombing, but said the destroyed Mount Lebanon Hotel may not have been the intended target because the vehicle loaded with explosives was in the middle of the street, and not parked in front of the hotel.

Morgenthaler said 17 people were killed, but gave no explanation for why the death toll was revised downwards from an earlier figure of 27.

Americans, Britons, Egyptians as well as other foreigners were staying at the hotel when the bomb went off. Many casualties were in adjacent buildings.

The blast set at least eight cars on fire, one of which was hurled into a store. Some vehicles were little more than mangled piles of metal. The explosion blew bricks, air conditioners, furniture, wires and other debris hundreds of yards from the hotel.

“It was huge boom followed by complete darkness and then the red glow of a fire,” said 16-year-old Walid Mohammed Abdel-Maguid, who lives near the hotel. A two-storey complex of offices and shops was also badly damaged.

The Mount Lebanon was a so-called soft target because it did not have concrete blast barriers and other security measures of the kind that protect offices of the US-led coalition and other buildings where Westerners live and work.

Brigadier General Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the 1st Armoured Division said he did not believe Iraqis linked to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party were behind the attack. Those former regime members are believed to be focusing attacks on US soldiers.

“We’re going after the extremists in Iraq and the extremists coming from outside Iraq,” General Hertling said.

“It’s just so frustrating. You take three steps forward and something like this happens and you take one step back.”

Mortars fired at US bases near Baghdad killed three American soldiers and wounded six others, a US military statement said today.

One attack was on the Logistics Base Seitz, home to the 13th Corps Support Command, in the town of Balad. One of the Americans died instantly at the base while the second died later in a combat support hospital, the statement said.

A second mortar attack on a 1st Marine Expeditionary Force base in Husayba along the Syrian border killed one Marine and wounded three others, the US military said.