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Triple car bomb explosions rock hotels in Baghdad

17 killed in blasts; tension mounts over statute vote

DEAFENING BLASTS: A huge explosion rattles the Palestine hotel, the building seen at right, in Baghdad, on Monday. — PHOTO: AP

BAGHDAD: Two enormous bombs, one of them a cement-mixing truck packed with explosives, blew up outside the Palestine Hotel — home to many foreign journalists in Iraq — wounding at least six persons and causing considerable damage.

Arab satellite television networks said 17 persons were killed in the vicinity of the bombs.

Associated Press Television News pictures showed the cement mixer exploding in a huge ball of flame and a cloud of smoke billowing into the central Baghdad sky.

Security sources said the explosions occurred two minutes apart, not long before Muslims marking Ramadan were preparing to break their day-long fast.

An AP photographer at a checkpoint at the northwest corner of the hotel said at least three fellow photographers from other media were injured and taken away by ambulance.

Photographers injured

Two AP television personnel inside the hotel sustained minor injuries.

The death toll of 17 was reported by the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera and the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya networks, quoting Iraqi security officials.

The bombers did not penetrate the concrete blast walls around the Palestine Hotel, which was last hit by a militant rocket on October 7, 2004.

There was considerable damage to the windows and rooms on the south side of the 19-storey hotel.

TV pictures showed a huge cloud of smoke rising from the scene and debris falling from the building.

After the bombing, Iraqi forces opened up with heavy automatic weapons fire, apparently firing at random. There was no sign of a further assault on the hotel.

The Associated Press journalists had to evacuate their bureau in the hotel and take refuge in the corridor.

Inside the hotel, light fixtures were blown down, pictures were blasted off the walls and windows were shattered.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Anbar province has vetoed the draft Constitution, bringing to two the number of Iraqi provinces which said "No" along with the previously announced Salahudin province, the Electoral Commission said on Monday.

Swing province

Anbar's rejection made Nineveh, the third Sunni-dominated province, become the swing province which can decide the final fate of the U.S.-backed charter.

Under Iraq's interim Constitution, if two thirds of the voters in any three provinces out of 18 Iraqi provinces say no to the draft, the charter will be vetoed, and Parliament dissolved.

Anbar province voted no to the Constitution in the October 15 referendum with 96 per cent, comparing with 81 per cent in Salahudin, according to partial results, Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, head of the commission, told reporters in a news conference.

He said figures for other four provinces, including Nineveh, were not ready and were being audited by the commission.

With the Constitution winning resounding support from Shias and Kurds, the only hope of Sunni Arabs to reject a charter they fear could hasten Iraq's break-up is to muster the two-thirds majority in three provinces.

Meanwhile, the toll of U.S. military personnel dead in Iraq since the invasion moved inexorably towards the 2,000 mark, with a marine on Sunday killed in action in Ramadi, the capital of Al-Anbar province. — AP

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