Terror explosions rock Iraq, Israel

BAGHDAD — A massive truck bomb struck the sprawling U.N. headquarters here yesterday, killing at least 20 persons including Sergio Vieira de Mello, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s representative to postwar Iraq.

Witnesses said a large truck — possibly a cement mixer — maneuvered its way close to one end of the U.N. compound between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m., and exploded with such fury that windows more than one mile away were shattered.

One witness said she had seen cement mixers moving in and out of the complex during the day where a new concrete security wall was under construction.

At least 100 persons, most of them U.N. staffers, were injured, and rescuers continued to pull victims out of the wreckage late into the night.

The United Nations last night identified seven of the dead, including one American, Rick Hooper, who worked with the U.N. Department of Political Affairs. Also named were two Filipinos, a Canadian, an Egyptian, a Briton and a Brazilian.

Mr. Vieira de Mello, whose second-floor office bore the brunt of the blast, clung to life for several hours as rescuers tried frantically to free him from the rubble, but he finally succumbed to his wounds.

“I grieve for him and I grieve for his family,” said Salim Lone, his spokesman. “But most of all, I grieve for the people of Iraq, because he was the man who could really have helped bring about the end of occupation and end to the trauma the people of Iraq have suffered for so long.”

Rubble was still falling from the building when a tearful U.S. chief administrator L. Paul Bremer III toured the site. “We will leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators of this attack,” he said after hugging Hassan al-Salame, an adviser to Mr. Vieira de Mello.

In Crawford, Texas, President Bush vowed to hunt down the bombers and said he would not be intimidated by “terrorists and the remnants of [Saddam Husseins] brutal regime.”

World Bank officials in Washington said yesterday that four employees and a consultant working at the U.N. site were missing yesterday. The International Monetary Fund, which also had staff working at the complex, said six IMF workers were hurt in the blast and were receiving treatment last night.

All the national flags outside the U.N. headquarters in New York were removed from the poles and the blue-and-white U.N. flag was lowered to half-staff.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but a U.S. official in Washington said suspicions centered on Ansar al-Islam, the same terrorist group with ties to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network that was believed to have carried out an earlier attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad.

Others suspects include former regime groups loyal to Saddam Hussein, such as the Fedayeen Saddam, a paramilitary group.

By early evening, U.N. and U.S. officials estimated that 14 or 15 had been killed and at least 40 wounded in the attack. But the Associated Press reported 20 dead based on a survey of Baghdad hospitals, and put the number injured at 100.

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