Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, USA
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 18, 2004 – 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.
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