IRAQ: At least six people were killed yesterday in Baghdad in a suicide bomb attack near a hotel used as CIA headquarters in the capital. The car exploded as it struck a concrete security cordon around the Baghdad Hotel in the city's crowded business district.
The second such attack in the past week, the massive blast left dozens injured in the street and extensive damage to nearby buildings, but left the hotel itself undamaged.
On Friday nine people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a local police station.
Witnesses at the scene of yesterday's explosion described how the car was shot at by security personnel as it sped down the pavement before careering into the concrete barrier.
Hussein Mutaeb, who owned a photo shop next to the blast site, said: "There was a terrible sound and the windows of my shop suddenly shattered. I couldn't see anything in the smoke and dust."
Thirty wounded, several of them critically ill, were yesterday taken to nearby al-Kindi hospital as American tanks moved into defensive positions around the blast site. All of the dead were reported to be Iraqi security men standing guard
At the entrance to the security cordon of the hotel - the CIA's headquarters in Iraq - the wall of an adjoining building was demolished. Several of the 10-tonne concrete slabs used to defend against just such an attack, were also knocked over.
Ghaith al-Qassi, who was sitting at a tea shop 100 metres away, said: "The car was driving at 60 mph. It was driving so fast I barely saw it before there was a sudden flash and the explosion knocked me from my chair."
The bombing was the most recent in a series of deadly attacks on Coalition forces in the city.
Since the devastating bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August that killed 22 people, security measures have been stepped up across the city leading to increasingly desperate attacks by those loyal to Saddam Hussein.
Last week a mortar fired at the Foreign ministry landed off target in the compound garden, and a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a hotel housing American civil administrators caused little damage.
As American tanks arrived to seal off the site of yesterday's attack and turn away the crowds it was clear that the concrete barricade outside had protected the CIA headquarters from the full brunt of the explosion.
The blast had instead taken its toll on local security guards outside the cordon and Iraqis on the street.
Earlier yesterday, a roadside bomb struck a convoy of three civilian vehicles in central Baghdad, injuring five Iraqis, including a Shi'ite cleric, witnesses said.
When US forces sealed off the area, a crowd gathered and one Iraqi teenager lobbed an explosive at a US Humvee armoured vehicle. One U.S. soldier was slightly injured.
Another roadside bomb exploded outside a US base in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Sunday wounding three soldiers, one seriously, an Army spokesman said.
The US military says there are an average of 12 to 25 attacks on their forces every day.
Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator for Iraq condemned the "terrorist" attack and promised it would not succeed in drawing attention away from the progress being made in the reconstruction process.
Washington is pushing for a new Security Council resolution giving the United Nations a broader mandate to try to persuade reluctant countries to help in stabilise Iraq.
Turkey has agreed to send troops, but Iraq's Governing Council, hand-picked by Washington, is resisting the move, saying neighbouring countries have too many of their own strategic interests in Iraq to be peacekeepers.