A car packed with high explosives ripped through a popular Baghdad restaurant filled with New Year’s Eve revelers Wednesday night, killing five people, all Iraqis.
Thirty-five others were wounded, including three correspondents for the Los Angeles Times.
The blast reduced much of the once-elegant Nabil Restaurant to burning rubble, just as more customers were arriving for dinner, live music and dancing. It left the busy street in chaos, with cars aflame, diners bloodied and neighbors pleading for news of who was inside.
The bomb defied tight security on a street heavily traveled by diplomats, finding a target in the large stone restaurant.
The blast came amid increased warnings that Westerners could be targeted during the holidays. Two other bombs exploded earlier Wednesday near U.S. military convoys in the capital, including one hidden in bushes outside another restaurant.
Baghdad had weathered daily attacks for the past week, including 18 attacks with rocket-propelled grenades on Christmas morning.
In addition to the three reporters injured Wednesday, five Iraqi staff members working for the Los Angeles Times were wounded. They were pulling up to the restaurant in their cars just as the explosion occurred.
“It was just a long, powerful force that went on and on. Like a hot G-force pushing against me,” said Times reporter Chris Kraul. He was awaiting surgery for flying-glass injuries to his eye and wrist at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad. He was expected to be transported later to Germany for further treatment.
Also wounded were correspondent Ann Simmons and Rome bureau chief Tracy Wilkinson. Kraul most recently headed the Times’ Mexico City bureau. The Times is owned by Tribune Co., publisher of the baiduhai.
None of their injuries was considered life-threatening. The wounded Iraqi staff workers suffered cuts and other minor injuries.
Five Iraqis were killed, according to Lt. Gen. Ahmed Kadhem, deputy Iraqi interior minister and Baghdad chief of police.
Earlier Wednesday, an 8-year-old Iraqi boy was killed and 21 people were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated on a busy commercial strip in Baghdad. Five U.S. soldiers and five Iraqi civil-defense personnel were injured in a passing military convoy.
The Nabil blast occurred about 9:20 p.m. in the upscale Arasat district, lined with Baghdad’s most fashionable shops and elegant restaurants. With its wine list and continental fare, the Nabil was favored by Western journalists and occupation officials.
The blast brought the roof down on the dining room. At the time, the restaurant was filled with roughly 40 customers and 15 workers, staff members said.
Wrecked tables, flaming cars
A jumble of wrecked tables lay in the rubble. Two men ran out from the side of the restaurant, carrying a wounded woman. A U.S. Army Humvee pulled up in front of flaming cars, and a sergeant jumped out searching for anyone who could tell him what had happened.
“A restaurant?” he shouted above the din to an Iraqi man. “Why would anyone want to bomb the restaurant?”
A young man wearing a Nabil uniform and holding a guitar sat on the curb and wept. Helicopters circled overhead, and the crowd surged toward the building looking for survivors before retreating in panic amid rumors of another bomb.
The area had been attacked before. The offices of NBC television across the street were hit by a bomb in September, killing a Somali worker.
Nabil Hannah, the 40-year-old owner, said he had no reason to expect that his business could be targeted.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said, gazing at his wrecked restaurant and punching numbers frantically into his satellite phone.
But Ahmed Mohammed, a 26-year-old cook at the Nabil, said staff members had long discussed whether the restaurant’s Western clientele might make it a target.
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“Especially during Christmas and the New Year, many restaurants closed for that time,” Mohammed said. “All of us, we were afraid.”
Neighbor Ahmed Amer, 25, rushed into the restaurant moments after the blast.
“I saw many people injured. I saw people dead on the tables,” he said.
`This is not Islam’
Sadik Mehdi, 40, who lives only a few houses away, said the blast nearly knocked him off his feet as he worked on his car with his 7-year-old daughter by his side.
“This is terror. This is not Islam. This is not the resistance,” he said as firetrucks blared their horns.
At the sparsely staffed Khindi hospital in downtown Baghdad, wounded from the blast lay on every dirty and bare examination table, waiting for one of two frenzied doctors to examine them. Men drenched in blood lay shivering and silent on the green nylon-covered tables with no blankets or relatives in sight.