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Huge explosion rocks area around United Nations headquarters in Baghdad

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

(08-19) 06:19 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

A huge explosion on Tuesday rocked a hotel housing the U.N. headquarters, injuring a number of people and severely damaging the building, a spokesman said.

The force of the blast, which knocked out windows up to a mile away from the scene, destroyed several cars, including one that was on fire.

The U.N. spokesman in Baghdad, Salim Lone, informed U.N. headquarters in New York that a number of people were hurt in the explosion, but no one was killed as far as he knew.

Lone said the explosion destroyed a significant part of the Canal Hotel in northeast Baghdad, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

U.S. Black Hawk helicopters could be seen flying toward the scene of the explosion. Black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air.

U.S. military officials could not confirm what had happened.

United Nations weapons inspectors worked out of the hotel during the period before the war.

"My house shook like it did during the bombing at the start of the war," a resident in the area around the hotel said.