BAGHDAD, Jan. 18 -- A white Toyota truck loaded with 1,000 pounds of plastic explosives and several 155-mm artillery shells exploded at the main public gate to U.S. occupation headquarters Sunday, killing at least 20 bystanders. Two of the dead were foreign contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense.

The 8 a.m. suicide bombing turned a central Baghdad street turned into an inferno. The bomb detonated in the middle of rush hour traffic, turned cars into bonfires, sent metal flying hundreds of yards away and shook buildings two miles off. It took place just outside a large, domed archway into the Republican Palace, one of deposed president Saddam Hussein's most grandiose residences. Soldiers posted there call it Assassin's Gate.

Some of the victims were trying to enter the headquarters for their jobs. Others had been driving by en route to jobs elsewhere.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came on the eve of a planned meeting in New York on Monday between the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Bremer is seeking to enlist the United Nations in the effort to divert Shiite clerics from their demands for direct elections. The United Nations withdrew its staff from Baghdad after 23 people were killed, including envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, in the bombing of its headquarters Aug. 19. Multiple bombings Oct. 27 killed 43 people at the International Committee of the Red Cross and four police stations.

Bremer called the bombing an "outrage" meant to "undermine freedom, democracy and progress in Iraq."

"Once again, it is innocent Iraqis who have been murdered by these terrorists in a senseless act of violence," Bremer said in a statement.

The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council blamed the "heinous crime" on terrorists allied with Hussein.

In recent days, U.S. officials had reported a reduction in attacks on American forces, to about 17 a day from more than double that number in November. However, the insurgency in central Iraq has carried out a continuous stream of deadly, sometimes spectacular attacks, many of which have resulted in numerous Iraqi dead. Car bombs have often been set off in areas between fortified U.S. compounds and the Iraqi streets.

In just the past week, a pair of bombs exploded in Baqubah, a town north of here, one at a mosque and the other at a police station. They killed eight people. In December, a series of bomb attacks in different cities killed 53 people.

Heavily armed U.S. forces are not immune. The insurgency has made increasingly sophisticated use of roadside bombs to attack convoys and surface-to-air missiles to shoot down helicopters. Eleven soldiers died in a pair of missile attacks within the past nine days.

On Sunday, a pair of Iraqis died in Tikrit, Hussein's home town, when a bomb in their car detonated. U.S. officials called it " a failed attempt to attack coalition forces."

The context for the violence has changed dramatically since last fall. Not only the military situation but political prospects in Iraq are uncertain.

Until December's capture of Hussein, U.S. concerns focused almost exclusively on resistance among Sunni Muslims in central Iraq, home to Hussein's hard core supporters. The Bush administration wants to hand power to a select transitional government by July 1. Against Washington's wishes, religious leaders of the country's Shiite Muslim majority are pressing for quick direct elections. The Shiites have threatened protests and even violence.

The Kurdish minority in the far north is demanding to annex disputed territory to a future autonomous zone, also against American desires. Its leaders warn of "problems" if their demands are not met.

The PE-4 plastic explosives used Sunday are found all over Iraq, said Col. Ralph Baker, commander of troops who guard Assassins' Gate. Packing artillery rounds with explosives is common car bomber practice here. A similar cocktail upended and ignited a Bradley fighting vehicle Friday in a town north of Baghdad, killing three soldiers.

The white pickup truck had "positioned itself to enter our compound," Baker said. "But it stopped or was stuck in line and the bomb was detonated." Three soldiers were lightly wounded, he said. One military official said two American civilian contracotrs were killed, but he later backed off the statement.

"Maybe it went off inadvertently. We will not be able to interview the guy who did it to find out," Baker added

"This attack shows that the resistance is becoming more organized and dangerous. They have confidence in themselves," said Mouhan Hafidh Fahad, an Iraqi military affairs commentator.

At the scene of Sunday's bombing, American soldiers in desert fatigues crouched behind sandbags and concrete barriers, rifles at the ready while others ferried the wounded to a hospital inside the U.S. complex. Civilians and Iraqi police rushed to comfort the wounded and carry them in blankets and stretchers to private vehicles and squad cars.

On the charred asphalt outside, a man in a blue jacket wandered aimlessly in the thick morning fog, blood streaming from his eyes. A woman in a floral scarf lay screaming on the pavement, her left foot all but separated from her leg at the ankle. An elderly laborer in the baggy pants customarily worn by Kurds, staggered about, his face covered in blood and mud.

"I do not know how it happened. I was standing in line waiting to get in. The explosion happened, I put my hand on my chest and felt the blood, like water from a pipe. I ran to a car. I lost consciousness. I woke up here," said Riadh Saed Ahmed, 26, a builder, speaking from a bed at Yarmouk Hospital.

"I saw dead police. I saw a young man with his face blown off. I saw bodies like charcoal. I lifted a woman without legs," said Mehdi Hamdani, a merchant who ran toward the carnage form his store up the street. "This is not war; this is criminal."

By sunset, cranes and tow trucks had removed wreckage from Assassins' Gate. Water from fire trucks filled the four-foot deep by three-foot wide crater.

Red Crescent ambulances brought a dozen blackened corpses in black canvas bags to the city morgue. None of the dead there could be immediately identified, said Alaa Alwan, a police office at the morgue.

Tension and chaos ruled emergency wards in three city hospitals that treated the wounded. At Karama Hospital one young man stripped away a gray blanket covering his dead brother's body and cried, "What is it that brought you to this place? I will avenge your death with my life!"

The brother of a badly wounded man named Hassan Taher wept when he saw his bloody wounds. He frantically asked about the fate of another brother, who was missing. Doctors had told reporters the man was dead. Fearing that the visitor would become enraged, the doctors said simply that they didn't know.

Abdullah Daoud, with a bandaged head, was standing in line waiting to be searched at the gate before entering the compound. "A guy moved to my side, and the bomb went off. He took the worst of it. I do not think he will make it. He's bandaged from head to foot. You can only see his eyes.

"I always thought it was dangerous to stand like that in the open. It is dangerous to be an Iraqi in the open."

---

Direct Link:
--http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26856-2004Jan18.html

---