Baghdad car bombs target foreign journalists' hotel
Two suicide car bombers detonated vehicles today in a Baghdad residential district, and a hotel housing foreign journalists was the apparent target, US and Iraqi officials said.
The blast was also close to an Interior Ministry building at the centre of a torture dispute.
At least six people were killed and 43 injured in the blast near the Hamra hotel in the Jadriyah district, officials said.
The blasts reverberated throughout the city centre, sent a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into the air and was followed by sporadic small arms fire.
Several residential buildings collapsed from the blasts, which gouged a large crater in the road. Firefighters joined neighbours to dig through the debris and under toppled blast barriers to pull victims from the rubble.
The deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal said the heavily-fortified hotel appeared to be the target, with the first bomb designed to breach blast walls protecting the Hamra.
If true, it would be the second attack against a hotel housing international journalists since the October 24 triple vehicle bomb attack against the Palestine Hotel.
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