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13
Killed, Scores Injured In Attack On U.N. Baghdad HQ
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Rescue workers look through the rubble of the U.N. headquarters in
Baghdad
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BAGHDAD,
August 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least 13 people
were killed in the bomb blast that ripped through the hotel-turned U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday, August 19, and tens others were
injured including the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, a U.N. spokesperson
confirmed.
"I
found nine of my friends dead buried in the rubble," said Nabil
Agob Hagabian, a U.N. employee, at the Al-Khindi hospital where he was
waiting to find out the fate of two African friends wounded in the
blast.
Hagabian
had rushed out after the blast to rescue the wounded at the Canal Hotel
in the northeast of the capital, which later became the U.N.
headquarters, reported Agence Francfe-Presse (AFP).
Meanwhile,
an admissions clerk at Al-Khindi said 27 people had been admitted there.
Another
10 were admitted to the Ibn al-Nafis hospital, while two more were
admitted to Baghdad's Italian Hospital, medical sources told AFP.
Earlier
at the site of the blast, American officials and police confirmed there
were dead in the attack.
"There
are confirmed dead. I cannot say how many," Bernard Kerik, the
U.S.-appointed advisor to the Iraq interior ministry, told reporters
outside the site of the blast.
An
Iraqi police officer said he had carried out bodies.
"I
carried out several bodies," said the officer, who refused to give
his name, amid a steady traffic of blood-stained bodies being carried
out on stretchers.
De
Mello wounded
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U.S. soldiers and medical staff evacuate injured people outside the U.N.
headquarters
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U.N.
special representative for Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello was among those
wounded in the attack and remains trapped in the rubble, reported the
BBC News Online.
Fred
Eckhard, a U.N. spokesman in New York, said he could not specify whether
de Mello had been seriously injured.
The
U.N. envoy was in his office at the time of the blast and was attended
to by rescue workers.
He
retained consciousness and was able to drink a glass of water, a U.N.
official in New York said on condition of anonymity.
A
U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, Salim Lone, told the BBC rescue workers were
struggling to free de Mello from the wreckage of his office.
The
blast took place "right below" his window, he said.
"I
guess it was targeted for that.
"His
office and the offices around him no longer exist - it is all
rubble," Lone said.
U.N.
spokeswoman Veronique Taveau told AFP in Baghdad that several people
were injured in the huge explosion.
Benon
Sevan, director of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, was also among
those injured, according to Taveau.
Eckhard
said the attack "is not only a personal tragedy but also a setback
for the U.N."
AFP
journalists at the scene saw several injured people and at least one
with a bloodied face after a witness saw a truck crash into the wall of
the Canal Hotel and explode.
Eckhard
said U.N. officials were in contact with Secretary General Kofi Annan,
who is currently vacationing in Finland.
He
said some 300 people work in the building but it was not clear how many
of them were in the office at the time of the attack.
"From
what we see on TV," Eckhard said, "the damage is substantial.
Human suffering is great."
"Suicide"
Kerik
said evidence indicated that the bombing was a "suicide"
attack.
"It
might have been a suicide bomber. There is evidence that suggests
that," Kerik said, outside the site of blast, as firemen sprayed
out fires inside the compound, where the explosion had taken a chunk off
the side of the building.
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