Baghdad Bomb Kills at Least 5 at a Restaurant

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 31 — A car bomb tore through a popular restaurant here filled with dozens of New Year's Eve revelers on Wednesday night, killing at least 5 people and wounding 24, including 3 Americans.

The blast was the worst of a rash of bombings on Wednesday, confirming the fears of the American military authorities that insurgents would use the New Year's holiday as an occasion to mount attacks, as they did on Christmas Day.

Iraqi police officers and American soldiers rushed to pull survivors from the fire and rubble of the Nabil Restaurant, once a popular spot for Baath Party officials and now a familiar gathering place for expatriates and upper-middle-class Iraqis.

Five Iraqis were killed in the blast, said Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, chief of the Iraqi police force.

Brig. Hamid Alyasiry of the Baghdad Police Department, who is in charge of Arasat, a shopping and restaurant district, said insurgents had used a car bomb. It was unclear whether it was a suicide bombing or a remotely detonated explosion.

"The people who are carrying out such attacks do not discriminate about the place," he told The Associated Press. "They want to frighten everyone to create terror."

Rescuers clawed through the rubble looking for survivors. Witnesses said patrons trapped inside could be heard screaming for help.

Outside, Iraqi firefighters struggled with a lone hose to put out flames that leapt 15 feet into the night, while soldiers and the police pushed back a growing crowd.

The smell of burnt rubber hung thick in the air, and the explosion carved a five-foot-deep crater in a side street facing the restaurant, collapsing the facade and shearing off the front of an adjacent house.

Standing outside the restaurant, Pergam Ali, a waiter, clutched his bloodied right sleeve and stared off into the darkness, murmuring: "I don't know anything about my brother. My brother was working there, too."

Soon after the explosion, the restaurant's owner, Nabil Ermis, dressed in a black suit, showed up to survey the damage. "It's unbelievable," he said, shaking his head.

The bombing capped a violent day here and in other parts of Iraq. Early Wednesday afternoon, a car bomb exploded in Baghdad as a United States Army convoy passed a bustling street full of shops. An 8-year-old Iraqi boy was killed and 21 other people were wounded, including 5 Army soldiers and 5 Iraqi militiamen, officials said.

Five hours later, a roadside bomb exploded in another Baghdad neighborhood in which a military convoy was passing, wounding three American soldiers and three Iraqi civilians.

In Kirkuk, at least 2 people were killed and 16 wounded after gunfire erupted during demonstrations over the political fate of the ethnically divided city in northern Iraq.

The restaurant blast occurred despite efforts by American troops and Iraqi security forces to buttress security around Baghdad with razor wire and additional checkpoints in anticipation of attacks.

"We've spent some time here of late gaining intelligence on what might happen to us over the next 46 to 72 hours," Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, told reporters four hours before the blast.

But the military authorities acknowledge there is little they can do to prevent the bombings of unprotected sites like restaurants and shopping areas as Iraqis and foreigners here pursue a normal life.

The explosion occurred at about 9:30 p.m. across the street from a hotel that houses the office of NBC News in Baghdad, which was bombed about two months ago. The side of the hotel was blackened from Wednesday night's fiery blast, its windows blown out.

The wounded included 21 Iraqis, said Dr. Mazen Jaafar, a surgeon at Ibn Nasees government hospital. Also among the wounded were three Los Angeles Times correspondents — Chris Kraul, Ann Simmons and Tracy Wilkinson — and four Iraqi staff members of the newspaper, according to a Times spokesman, David Garcia.

Ahmed Muhammad, 26, a cook in the restaurant, said about 40 patrons and 15 employees were inside when the bomb went off. "We expected it, especially for Christmas and New Year's," he said. "A lot of restaurants closed today because of the security situation."

At one point tensions flared when some British peace advocates began screaming at the soldiers, blaming the American military presence here for the attacks against Iraqi civilians. "You've got blood on your hands!" they shouted.

In northern Iraq, the violence that broke out in Kirkuk came after hundreds of largely Arab protesters marched in opposition to a political bid by Kurds to reclaim control of the city. Last week, proponents of bringing Kirkuk into a proposed Kurdish federation held their own march, without incident.

There were conflicting reports about how the shooting started. Witnesses fleeing the scene told The Associated Press that the police opened fire on the crowd, but police officials said that the first shots were by members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as the protesters converged on the party's offices.

American soldiers moved in with tanks to barricade the area and set up checkpoints at major intersections. Col. Salem Taha of the Kirkuk police told The A.P. that 2 protesters were killed and at least 16 were wounded.

At one time, Kirkuk was a predominantly Kurdish city. In an effort to alter the demographic character of the region, Saddam Hussein displaced Kurds and Turkish-speaking Turkmen with Arabs from other parts of Iraq.

Since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government, both Arabs and Kurds have claimed a majority in the city, the center of a region that sits on billions of barrels of oil reserves.

Why, oh why, can't a bomb go off where these "peace activists" gather?

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