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Compiled from Times wiresUp to 20 people are killed, including a top U.N. administrator, in the attack in Baghdad. A U.N. official says the site was lightly guarded by design.
BAGHDAD - Terrorists attacked the United Nations' headquarters in Iraq on Tuesday, killing the top U.N. representative in the country and up to 20 others, mostly Iraqis.
More than 100 were wounded about 4:30 p.m. Baghdad time when a cement truck packed with nearly 500 pounds of C4 explosive slammed into the corner of the building where Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations' special representative for Iraq, had his second-floor office.
Rescue workers, Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers labored into the night trying to dig bodies from the rubble of the former Canal Hotel, which had been converted a decade ago into the U.N.'s main administrative center in the Iraqi capital.
U.N. officials said the attack would make no difference in the organization's role in Iraqi recovery.
The blast, believed to be the largest ever against a U.N. facility, came just 12 days after a car bomb killed 19 people at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. But except for a new concrete wall and coalition military patrols of the neighborhood, U.N. officials at the headquarters refused the sort of strong 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," said Salim Lone, the U.N. spokesman in Baghdad.
"We are unarmed. We don't have a lot of security, as this bomb shows," Lone told CNN. "We don't want a lot of security, because we're here to help the people of Iraq."
The blast may have specifically targeted Vieira de Mello, said L. Paul Bremer, who heads the U.S.-led administration in Iraq. Nadia Younis, Vieira de Mello's chief of staff, was also believed killed.
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 officials in his office when the explosion brought the room down around them. He 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.
Vieira de Mello began work June 2 and would have finished his assignment at the end of September, though his spokesman Lone said many U.N. officials wanted him to stay on. From September 2002 until this May, he served as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
Deputy Syrian Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose country holds the Security Council presidency, said that "such terrorist incidents cannot break the will of the international community" and that U.N. programs would continue.
So will American work on reconstruction, President Bush said.
"The terrorists who struck today have again shown their contempt for the innocent," he said from his ranch in Crawford, Texas. "They showed their fear of progress and their hatred of peace.
"These killers will not determine the future of Iraq. Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime."
However, some Democrats said the attack provided fresh evidence that Bush failed to anticipate the perils and difficulties of occupying and rebuilding Iraq.
"Had the president pursued the war on terrorism prior to initiating military action against Saddam Hussein - as I advocated last year - it is likely that al-Qaida and other terrorist networks would not have been able to take advantage of the chaos that now exists in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq," Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement.
Another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, said in a statement, "It is becoming increasingly clear each day that the administration misread the situation on the ground in Iraq and lacks an adequate plan to win the peace and protect our troops."
It was unclear Tuesday evening who was directly responsible for the attack, which was clearly sophisticated and carefully planned. But there has been speculation in recent weeks about terrorist attacks by Ansar al-Islam, a violent group linked to al-Qaida.
The attack seemed more similar to those by terrorist groups than by Hussein loyalists, experts said.
Witnesses said they saw a cement-mixer truck turn off the road in front of the compound, rumble through a parking lot and crash into the brick wall that surrounds the building. The truck evidently penetrated the wall before it exploded; its remains were frozen midway through the wall.
"The guards asked the truck to stop, but he didn't obey the order and he forced his way inside the compound. Then everything blew up," said Saad Ziad, a U.N. worker who was deafened by the blast.
Mustafa Naji, a U.N. employee, said: "We were in this meeting about land mines and all of a sudden there was an explosion. The lights went out and we ran down the corridor and out the building."
The explosion left a crater about 5 feet deep and 15 feet wide, and an entire corner of the building collapsed.
Officials said about 300 people worked in the building, and the blast took place as many were leaving for the day. Windows also blew out and parts of the ceiling collapsed at the National Spinal Cord Injury Center next door, piling rubble onto dozens of paralyzed patients, said witnesses who pulled them from the wreckage.
More than a dozen Red Crescent ambulances swarmed onto the hospital's grounds, and more than 40 patients were evacuated, said Mohammed Kassen, a hospital worker who helped with the rescue efforts.
Several journalists were at the compound for a news conference on land mine removal when the blast occurred. Video footage of the conference goes black, and a ferocious explosion can be heard along with screams.
Seconds later, the picture returns, and a scene of chaos unfolds. People were covered with dust and debris, and some had deep cuts on their heads.
The modest Canal Hotel was converted to U.N. headquarters after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Under Hussein it was the site of government-organized demonstrations against U.N. sanctions. Throughout the 1990s and early this year, it served as home for the thwarted U.N. weapons inspectors.
- Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers, the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.