Baghdad Embassy Car Bombing Kills 12

A powerful car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy here Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and wounding 48 others in the first major attack targeting foreign civilians in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Most of the casualties, however, were Iraqis.

No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which shattered windows hundreds of feet away and incinerated five nearby vehicles. But initial speculation on the assailants ranged from Hussein loyalists angry at Jordan for its support of the United States to -- more ominously -- foreign or Al Qaeda-style operatives.

The car bombing raised the specter that future attacks on either civilian targets or U.S. forces could be far more lethal than the shootings, rocket-propelled-grenade attacks and land-mine blasts that have targeted U.S. troops and Iraqis who work with the Americans.

The explosion, which occurred about 11 a.m. when the embassy is usually busy with people applying for visas and conducting other business, demolished a wall in front of the two-story sandstone complex.

“It was a very terrible scene. There was smoke, fire, the smell of burning gunpowder and blood,” said Hayawi Jabar, a paramedic who arrived at the embassy just minutes after the blast.

Safa Hussein, 38, an ambulance driver who made 12 trips to the scene, said he was driving near the embassy when he heard an explosion, and then another.

“It was a car that exploded from the first blast,” he said. “I saw it exploding and burning in front of me. We pulled four people out of the car -- they were completely burned. You could not see their faces.

“I was a soldier for 12 years, I fought in the Iran-Iraq war, and I worked as an ambulance driver in this last war. And I never saw anything as bad on the battlefield as I saw today.”

Although doctors said the dead and wounded were predominantly Iraqis, a few Jordanians were injured as well as Arabs from other countries who were in the Al Zuhoor neighborhood on the west bank of the Tigris River, home to many embassies. A handful of women and four children were among the injured, according to doctors at the Pediatric Hospital, where all of the injured were initially taken. Many patients were later transferred to specialty hospitals.

Immediately after the blast, U.S. troops in tanks and Humvees, as well as Iraqi police, descended on the scene. Bystanders said they tried to rush into the building to assist the wounded but were driven back by a Jordanian Embassy guard who opened fire, believing they were about to loot the building.

“I went in to help the people, but the Jordanian guard pulled his gun,” said Ali Hassan, 22.

At least two of the ambulances had bullet holes where they had been shot by Jordanian guards, according to their drivers.

Large crowds of Iraqis gathered at the embassy and blamed the United States for the attack. A rumor circulated that a U.S. helicopter had fired at the embassy with a missile, although other witnesses said the helicopters arrived after the explosion.

U.S. military officials said the vehicle carrying the explosives was an SUV but offered no information on who the driver and possible passengers were or whether they escaped or were killed in the bombing.

Car bombings have been nearly nonexistent in postwar attacks in Iraq.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell decried the bombing and said it only bolstered American resolve “to unite the world in this campaign against terrorism.”

Jordanian Information Minister Nabil Sharif echoed him, saying, “This criminal act will only boost our determination to continue our support for the brotherly Iraqi people.”

Although U.S. officials in Baghdad declined to speculate on who was behind the strike or on a possible motive for the attack, they have warned repeatedly that foreign fighters are in Iraq and that they could launch such assaults.

“What this tells us is that we have some professional terrorists operating here,” said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq.

Some Iraqis speculated that supporters of Saddam Hussein were responsible for the bombing and that they targeted Jordan because of its quiet backing of the U.S.-led military campaign that toppled the Iraqi dictator.

Others on the scene said the attack might have been devised by Hussein’s opponents furious at Jordan for granting asylum to two daughters of the deposed leader last week.

“We are completely angry with that news that Jordan allowed them to stay. Let the members of the criminal Saddam Hussein family be hunted and tracked down to the ends of the Earth,” said an Iraqi bystander who identified himself only as Mr. Termiy.

A more frightening scenario, however, is that the bombing is not an isolated incident but the work of Al Qaeda-style operatives, either working on their own or with anti-American Iraqis.

At the Pentagon on Thursday, Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed to a specific group, the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar al Islam, that operated out of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq before the war.

“I think the one organization that we have confidence that we know is in Iraq and in the Baghdad area is Ansar al Islam,” Schwartz said. “And it is unknown whether this particular organization was associated with the events of this morning. Perhaps that will become clear as we go down the road, but that is an Al Qaeda-related organization and one that we are focusing attention on.”

But in Washington, a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had seen no evidence linking the attack to the extremist Islamic group.

“We can’t tie them to Baghdad,” he said.

U.S. military officials said that Iraqi and Jordanian authorities would lead the investigation into the attack but that U.S. assistance would be provided if sought.

It will be up to the Iraqis and Jordanians to “determine whether the individuals responsible for the bombing stayed in the car, got out of the car and, of course, why,” said Lt. Col. Eric Nantz, a soldier at the scene.

The Americans also said that Iraqi police, not occupation forces, are responsible for protecting embassies in Iraq, although Sanchez said the foreign troops conduct patrols 24 hours a day in the embassy district.

Members of the new Iraqi Governing Council have demanded in recent days that more responsibility for security in the country be turned over to Iraqis. But in the wake of Thursday’s bombing, groups represented on the panel said Americans bore some of the responsibility for the chaos in the country and should make protecting embassies one of their priorities.

“It is necessary for coalition forces to strengthen their protection of embassies,” said Ahmed Khafaji, a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the Shiite Muslim groups represented on the Governing Council. “We did not ask them to protect the embassies because protecting the embassies should be part of their job.”

A. Naqib, a spokesman for the Iraqi Independent Democrats headed by lawyer Adnan Pachachi, said “the Americans, in my opinion, shoulder part of the responsibility for creating this [insecure] environment.”

After the blast, the emergency rooms of the three hospitals that received most of the patients were spattered with blood as doctors rushed people into surgery and tended to those with the most serious injuries.

Jordanian intelligence officials arrived quickly at the two hospitals with the most wounded and stopped reporters from talking to the injured or their relatives. Armed hospital guards blocked the doors.

Late into the evening, relatives of the wounded were still going from one area hospital to another searching for their loved ones.

At the Pediatric Hospital, Ali Salah Jumaa, 20, pored over the registry book of the wounded, searching for the names of two friends who were with his brother when their car was hit by the blast.

Jumaa had found his brother, who had been taken to another hospital, but could find no sign of his companions. “I saw the car. It was an olive-green Caprice, 1979. It was totally destroyed,” he said, his voice shaking.

The hospital did not have a list of the dead because they could not be identified, said a clerk at the information desk.

Many Iraqis were stoic about the bombing, saying that they had just lived through a war and that such violence was to be expected. But they expressed confusion about why civilians would be targeted.

“We are innocents,” said Shaheed Mahmoud, 50, an embassy guard who was injured in the blast. “Why are they doing such things to us? What will they win if we are killed?”

Times staff writers Edmund Sanders in Baghdad and Bob Drogin in Washington contributed to this report.