In the second deadly attack in a month aimed at the United Nations headquarters, a suicide car bomber armed with a belt of explosives killed himself and an Iraqi police officer Monday on the eve of a key UN session on Iraq’s future.
The blast a few yards outside the heavily fortified main UN gate came as the work day was beginning and injured 19 Iraqis, most of them police. The bomber, who had additional 50 pounds of TNT in his trunk, set off the blast as Iraqi police were inspecting the vehicle. The explosion was about 200 yards away from any of the compound’s buildings.
The attack cast a pall over already-demoralized personnel at the UN complex, much of it in rubble from a bombing last month that killed at least 22 people.
It came after assailants on Saturday shot and seriously wounded an Iraqi Governing Council member, Aquila al-Hashimi, who was expected to become Iraq’s UN representative and had been scheduled to attend a Security Council session Tuesday in New York.
In the face of the insurgency, President Bush is expected to address the UN on Tuesday to ask for more international military and economic aid and to suggest a larger, but still limited, role for the world body.
UN representatives in Iraq and officials of the U.S.-led coalition believe the assassination attempt and bombing were aimed at discrediting the Bush administration and forestalling the arrival of international help.
A “shocked and distressed” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was leading discussions in New York to reassess the UN mandate in Iraq, agency officials said. Annan is demanding better security in exchange for an increased UN presence.
“It seems obvious that it is designed to keep us from doing our mission,” UN spokeswoman Antonia Paradela said of the bombing and the shooting of the council member. “It’s really worrying.”
Iraqi police and FBI investigators combed the wreckage outside the UN headquarters but said they had no suspects. Still, the U.S.-led coalition insisted that backers of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein probably were behind the bombing.
“We are getting down to the most hardened, difficult regime loyalists,” said Lt. Col. George Krivo, a U.S. military spokesman. He called the attack “an act of sheer brutality.”
The blast came as many foreign UN staffers are slowly returning from a hiatus after the first bombing Aug. 19 killed the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and several of his top aides.
UN staffers inside unhurt
While well-insulated from Monday’s blast by sand bunkers and barbed wire, UN staffers nonetheless felt the bomb’s impact. Some went screaming through the halls while others burst into tears.
There are more than 300 foreigners with the UN staff in Iraq, but since the August bombing none of them have been working full-time at the Baghdad complex, and none were harmed in Monday’s attack. Two Iraqi staffers were seriously injured, while 17 Iraqi police officers were wounded.
“Now the question being addressed by our staff in Baghdad and New York is: How can we strike a balance between security and our work?” Paradela said. “It’s hard for us to operate in these conditions.”
The detonation in the parking lot across from the UN gate echoed through the city around rush hour Monday, a little after 8 a.m., as dozens of Iraqis were arriving for work at the UN compound.
Iraqi and international investigators combing the scene believe the bomber first attempted to turn into the main gate but was diverted across the street to a parking lot by Iraqi police.
Near the parking lot, a few dozen police were meeting in an abandoned building for their daily morning briefing. There also is a huge fortification nearby for U.S. soldiers guarding the complex.
After making small talk with a policeman, the bomber exited his vehicle and blew himself up as the officer opened the trunk to check for explosives, witnesses said. A 50-pound bomb detonated from the trunk, Iraqi police said.
“We were just sitting in a garage,” said Malek Hamid, a maintenance man arriving for work. “All of a sudden we saw a car come in and it exploded.”
The wounded went to nearby Al-Kindi Hospital.
One victim, Malek Yasim, drove himself to the emergency room with three of his friends, one of whom also was injured.
Yasim leaned forward in his car seat showed three bandages on his back that covered shrapnel wounds. Another friend dabbed his bloody shirt on an oozing leg wound.
Americans not the target
“I was 15 to 20 meters away from the blast when it happened,” said Yasim, who watched as Iraqi police officers fell from the blast. “I think they were aiming at the police, not the Americans.”
In the hospital parking lot, Wisam Majid sat with a small bandage covering the shrapnel wound to his right leg. A sign painter, Majid said he is quitting his UN job.
Inside the hospital, wounded police officer Mohammed Moussa Abadied nursed burns on his right arm. White plaster covered his bloody, swollen nose.
The last thing he remembered before the blast, he said, was a friend asking him to check out the white Mercedes that had just pulled into the parking area.
“I will kill the people who did this to me,” Abadied vowed.
