A suicide bomber smashed a car full of explosives at high speed into a hotel compound believed to house the Baghdad offices of the CIA and FBI yesterday, killing six people and wounding dozens more.
A member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Mouwafak al-Rabiyeh, was in the Baghdad Hotel and was injured on the hand. The building served council members as well as dozens of senior American officials and contractors.
Guards at the hotel, in the heart of the capital, opened fire on the driver as he sped towards the entrance of the compound, which is shielded by a wall of 15ft-high concrete slabs on the street.
Witnesses said that the car careered into the blocks and exploded, bringing a 20ft (6m) segment of the wall crashing down into al-Sadoun Street, one of the main thoroughfares in the city.
One Iraqi guard and at least five other people were killed. Several Iraqi policemen were wounded in the blast, which came just three days after two suicide bombers carried out an identical attack on a police station in the capital, killing eight people.
The attacks have sent a shockwave through Baghdad, sparking fears of a renewed spate of bombings similar to a prolonged terror campaign in the summer.
"If they can do that to the CIA and FBI, imagine what they can do to people like us," one witness, who was too scared to give his name, said. "This means the Americans are very weak."
Elsewhere in Iraq yesterday, three American soldiers were slightly injured in an attack just outside the main US army base in Tikrit, a stronghold of Saddam Hussein's supporters, and another was wounded when his convoy came under attack near the northern city of Kirkuk.
While the Baghdad bomb punched a gaping hole in the concrete wall on al-Sadoun Street, smashing windows of businesses and setting nearby cars ablaze, it did no substantial damage to the Baghdad Hotel itself, which is set around 100 yards back from the street.
"Everyone knew this was the CIA headquarters," the owner of a photography shop opposite the entrance to the hotel said. Locals believed that it was also home to Israeli agents, although the US-led coalition has never confirmed that any specific security organisation was active behind its high, well-guarded walls.
Part of the FBI's task in Baghdad is to investigate a spate of previous bombings, such as the attack on the United Nations' headquarters and the bombing of a prominent Shia cleric at a mosque. Those attacks killed more than 120 people.
As smoke billowed across central Baghdad and as petrol tanks in nearby cars caught fire and exploded, rescue teams carried out the wounded on stretchers or helped hastily bandaged guards to limp to ambulances. Bullets from weapons abandoned by guards in the explosion fired off occasionally off as the flames engulfed them, sending rescue workers scampering.
The street was quickly sealed off by US troops, who hurried to the blast site. Helicopters circled overhead, looking out for further attacks.
The bomb exploded at around 12:40pm as al-Sadoun Street was busy with traffic. As with most of the attacks that have rocked the city in recent months, the casualties appeared to be mainly Iraqis.
"This happened because we don't accept Americans here," one elderly man said as cars burned behind him on the debris-strewn street and firemen rushed to douse the flames. "It's usually Iraqis who are killed, but that's the price we have to pay."
The coalition blames the attacks on hardline supporters of Saddam's former regime, as well as on Islamic extremists from Iraq or from abroad, smuggled across Iraq's loosely controlled borders. Al-Qaeda is believed to be at work in the country.
The terrorists' aim is to cripple reconstruction efforts and to stoke hostility towards the coalition and the governing council that the Americans have set up as an interim administration.
Paul Bremer, the American in charge of the coalition's civilian administration, said that they would not succeed.
"The terrorists know that the Iraqi people and the coalition are succeeding in the reconstruction of Iraq," he said. "They will do anything, including taking the lives of innocent Iraqis, to draw attention away from the extraordinary progress made since liberation."
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