Suicide bomb strikes U.N. in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A cement truck packed with explosives devastated the United Nations headquarters in Iraq on Tuesday, killing the top U.N. envoy and 19 other people in an unprecedented attack against the world body. At least 100 people were wounded.

The bombing blasted a 6-foot-deep crater and shredded the facade of the Canal Hotel, which housed the U.N. offices. The suicide attack stunned an organization that had long been welcomed by Iraqis, even by many who protested the presence of U.S.-led occupation forces.

Except for a newly built concrete wall, U.N. officials at the headquarters refused the sort of heavy security that the U.S. military has put up around some sensitive civilian sites. The United Nations "did not want a large American presence outside," Salim Lone, the U.N. spokesman in the Iraqi capital, said.

Emergency workers pulled bloodied survivors from the rubble and lined up the dead in body bags. Survivors reported other victims still buried.

The 4:30 p.m. blast may have specifically targeted Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. envoy, said L. Paul Bremer, who heads the U.S.-led administration in Iraq. "The truck was parked in such a place here in front of the building that it had to affect his office," Bremer said.

Vieira de Mello -- a 55-year-old veteran diplomat serving in what one U.N. spokesman called the world body's toughest assignment -- was meeting with other U.N. officials in his office when the explosion brought the room down around them. Vieira de Mello was wounded and trapped in the rubble, and workers gave him water as they tried to extricate him. Hours later, the United Nations announced his death.

"Those who killed him have committed a crime, not only against the United Nations but against Iraq itself," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement, calling the Brazilian diplomat "an outstanding servant of humanity."

The dead also included Richard Hooper, 40, of Walnut Creek, Calif., who was special assistant to the U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs. Other United Nations workers who were killed came from the Philippines, Egypt, Britain and Canada.

U.N. officials vowed to continue their mission in Iraq. But the blast, the shock at being targeted and the death of a rising star beloved in the organization struck deep. All the national flags that ring the U.N. headquarters' entrance in New York were removed from their poles, and the blue-and-white U.N. flag was lowered to half staff. Staffers, tears in their eyes, gathered in hallways and watched in shock as televisions reported on his death.

President Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, called the bombers "enemies of the civilized world."

"These killers will not determine the future of Iraq," Bush said. "Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime."

U.N. and U.S. officials called the bombing a "terrorist attack," but there was no immediate claim of responsibility. The bombing came nearly two weeks after a car exploded and killed 19 people at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad and after a string of dramatic attacks on oil and water pipelines in Iraq.

Like the remote-controlled explosion at the Jordan Embassy, the suicide bombing on the U.N. headquarters focused on a high-profile target with many civilians inside and resembled attacks blamed on Islamic militants elsewhere in the world. It was far more sophisticated than the guerrilla attacks that have plagued U.S. forces, featuring hit-and-run shootings carried out by small bands or remote control roadside bombs.

As FBI agents joined the investigation, Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, told reporters that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing.

But he said it was "much too early" to say if Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network was behind the attack. "We don't have that kind of evidence yet."

U.S. forces have been focusing on trying to put down Saddam Hussein loyalists thought to be behind the guerrilla campaign against American troops. But the military has also warned of foreign Islamic militants slipping into the country and has said an al-Qaida linked group, Ansar al-Islam was a possible suspect in the Jordanian Embassy bombing.

al-Qaida ideology

Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the attack fits "the ideology of al-Qaida. They consider the U.N. one of the international actors who helped the Americans to occupy Palestine and, later, Iraq."

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said that if Tuesday's attack was confirmed to be a suicide bombing "it would, to my knowledge, be the first on a U.N. facility." It was the worst attack on a U.N. facility since Israeli forces, responding to a Hezbollah attack, bombarded a U.N. compound at Qana in southern Lebanon in April 1996, killing 91 refugees.