Posted on 03/18/2004 10:36:44 AM PST by Calpernia
Coalition officials said today that the March 17 bombing of Baghdad's Mount Lebanon Hotel killed only seven people, not 27 as previously believed.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for Combined Joint Task Force 7, briefed reporters on the bombing at a Baghdad news conference.
Kimmitt said a suicide bomber triggered the device inside a vehicle and died in the explosion.
"The bomb was estimated to consist of approximately 1,000 pounds of explosives and artillery shells," he said. The bomb caused structural damage to the hotel and a number of nearby buildings.
Kimmitt said that Iraqi Police service and the Iraqi Ministry of Health revised casualty figures to seven killed and 35 wounded. Early estimates in such estimates often are wrong, Kimmitt explained, and as more time passes, the facts become progressively more apparent. No coalition personnel were injured he said, although coalition forces were dispatched to provide assistance.
Though no group has claimed responsibility and the no one has been detained in connection with the attack, Kimmitt said coalition authorities strongly believe the attack is consistent with the work of fugitive terrorist Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.
"It's likely that this was of the same ilk, of the same methods, of the same groups that we've seen up to this point in other places such as in Iskandariyah, Khalidiyah, Karbala, Najaf," Kimmitt said.
"If you take a look at the fact that a suicide bomber was used," he explained, "clearly the intent was not for a military purpose but for a spectacular purpose: attempt to kill as many civilians as possible. And if you look at the symbology of trying to attack inside the center of a city rather than against a military target, those are some of the fingerprints, those are some of the techniques that we have come to associate with terrorist bombings, whether it was Zarqawi's group, Ansar al-Islam (or) al Qaeda."
Coalition Provisional Authority senior spokesman Dan Senor said the timing certainly fits Zarqawi's blueprint of terror mapped out in an intercepted letter.
"If you look at the timing of the attack, it certainly fits with the sort of strategy that Zarqawi talks about," Senor added. "It's just a matter of days following the signing of the interim constitution by the Iraqi Governing Council, which is an enormous step forward in the path to a sovereign, democratic Iraq which Zarqawi, in his blueprint for terror, talks about being the greatest obstacle to the terrorists here."
Kimmitt told reporters the coalition remains "resolute" in its mission to hunt down and capture or kill extremists who attack innocent civilians and "who stand in the way of a free, democratic and sovereign Iraq. The terrorists will fail," he said.
Cautioning that only sketchy details had emerged so far, Kimmitt reported two new attacks against coalition forces and Iraqi citizens that happened earlier today.
He said not much is yet known about a bomb blast outside a hotel in Basara, even whether the blast was caused by an improvised explosive device a or car bomb or whether how many people were injured or killed.
"We believe we only have one or two persons that were injured or killed in that," he said. "There is a large demonstration going on at that site. The report we have is that the demonstration is not focused on any particular group such as the coalition, but just expressing their anger."
In Fallujah, a mortar round landed on a rooftop where coalition forces were providing overwatch security for a group of local authorities attending a meeting. "Some time during the meeting, a number of mortar rounds came in in that vicinity, probably to go against, disrupt the meeting," Kimmitt said. A mortar round landed on the rooftop, injuring eight soldiers and a Marine, though none of the injuries is considered life-threatening, he added.
Senor read a message from coalition administrator Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, offering condolences to the families of Iraqis killed and injured in recent attacks and condemning the attackers. In his message, Bremer said terrorists are doing everything within their power to stop Iraq's progress toward democracy.
"Their increasing tendency to attack any available target that offers the chance of mass causalities tell us that literally nothing is sacred to them," he said. "They are willing to kill religious pilgrims, innocent Iraqis living next to lightly protected hotel or any one else."
Terrorists in Iraq seek to break the will of the Iraqi people, he said. "They believe that if they spill enough Iraqi blood, they can halt Iraq's progress to democracy. They (are wrong."
Bremer said Iraqis "are not going to permit a small band of evildoers to stand between them and democracy," and that Iraqis and the coalition will stand against terrorism.
Private Mail to be added to or removed from the GNFI (or Pro-Coalition) ping list.
I wonder what the real story is on who was staying in the Cedars of Lebanon hotel.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Tom Daschle is deeply saddened.
You just know he is.
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