Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 19 January 2004 — A massive suicide truck bomb killed dozens of people, two of them believed to be Americans, and wounded scores more yesterday in the deadliest attack yet on the US-led coalition’s heavily fortified central Baghdad headquarters.

The blast caused widespread devastation at the compound’s main entrance, known as the Assassin’s Gate, turning a busy city-center street into a battlefield inferno.

Dead and wounded lay on the ground, flames devoured cars and black smoke spewed into the air as US tanks and armored vehicles sealed off the street near the wall surrounding the coalition’s sprawling administrative compound known as the Green Zone. Pandemonium ensued in the moments after the car exploded.

“The blast was so strong. I never heard anything like that before,” said witness Ahmed Hassan. “Soldiers panicked. One was thrown to the ground. I saw an Iraqi coalition employee hit the ground. He was wounded. It was so strong.”

The grisly attack bore out US officials’ predictions of greater bloodshed as insurgents try to derail the coalition’s plans to return sovereignty to Iraqis by the end of June.

But US civil administrator Paul Bremer vowed that the “outrage” would fail in its goal as he prepared for crucial talks with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan today on a renewed UN role in the transition.

Combined tolls from hospitals and the military put the number of dead at 25 and the wounded at around 130.

US officers at the scene said the toll was expected to rise yet further as bodies remained trapped in the wreckage of vehicles late yesterday.

“Twenty cars are still there, 10 of them still have bodies in them,” said Spc. Thomas Lindeman just before sunset as soldiers scoured the wreckage and Iraqis wandered with pictures of loved ones, asking if anyone knew their fate.

At least two American civilian contractors were believed to be among the dead, the coalition’s deputy director of operations, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. A US military spokesman said US medical facilities had received 20 dead and 60 wounded, three of them US contractors and three US soldiers. Another five dead and 71 wounded were reported at Baghdad hospitals.

Bremer’s talks at the United Nations are seen as particularly important.

Annan had pulled out the world body’s overseas staff after a series of attacks last year, notably the Aug. 19 bombing of its Baghdad offices which killed his Iraq envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.

Outside Baghdad, an Iraqi civilian was killed and two wounded yesterday when US soldiers opened fire after a roadside bomb exploded in the oil refinery town of Baiji, its police chief said.

Two Iraqis, suspected of plotting attacks against US soldiers, also died in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit when a bomb they were handling exploded, the US military said.

— Additional input from agencies