Posted on 03/23/2003 3:44:58 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Blast heard outside Iraq invasion force HQ in Qatar
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, March 23 (Reuters) - An explosion was heard on Sunday outside the Qatar headquarters of U.S.-led forces invading Iraq, apparently from a nearby industrial site, witnesses said.
"We're investigating it. We just have initial reports of a sound," U.S. Marines Captain Stewart Upton, a spokesman at the U.S./UK Central Command headquarters, told Reuters.
Witnesses said the explosion apparently came from warehouses outside the sprawling camp in desert land outside the capital Doha. A pall of smoke hung briefly in the air.
A French journalist who was on a shuttle bus by the main gate to the media centre at the time of the incident said the explosion kicked up dust in the area, where many industrial buildings are located.
"It wasn't smoke, it was dust. I think it was from an industrial compound," journalist Laurent Boussie told Reuters.
Another journalist who was with Boussie said he believed the explosion was an accident, and appeared located about 100-150 metres (yards) from the main gate of the media centre.
"It wasn't so big," he said.
Journalists inside the centre could not hear the explosion.
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