BAGHDAD, 25 October 2005 — Suicide bombers blasted through the concrete walls surrounding the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad yesterday in an apparent effort to take over the hotel and grab foreign and Arab journalists as hostages, the Iraqi national security adviser said.
At least 20 passers-by were killed, but only about seven people inside the hotel — home to a number of foreign and Arab journalists and foreign contract workers — were wounded. No one inside the hotel was badly hurt.
Iraq’s national security adviser, Mouwafak Al-Rubaie, said the attack — which appeared well planned — was a “very clear” effort to take over the hotel and grab foreign and Arab journalists as hostages. Security still photos showed a clear attempt to attack the hotel.
The violence came as the fate of Iraq’s post-Saddam Hussein constitution hinged on the still undeclared results of a single Sunni-dominated province after a second region resoundingly rejected the charter.
Electoral officials announced that the western Al-Anbar province rejected the constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum with 96.95 percent voting against, joining Salaheddin which rejected the results by 81.5 percent.
With a two-thirds majority against in three of Iraq’s provinces sufficient to torpedo the whole document, all eyes are now on the result in the Sunni-dominated “swing” province of Nineveh and its mixed capital of Mosul.
However election officials appeared relaxed as they kept the world on tenterhooks over the final outcome of the referendum.
“There is no problem in this province, the results are being verified and counted again, then we will issue the final result,” said senior election official Abdul Hussein Hindawi.
“We don’t have a result yet. We will get it later today and give it tomorrow.” The other three of the final four provinces — Irbil, Babel and Basra — are expected to overwhelmingly approve the charter.
With the constitution winning resounding support from Shiites and Kurds, the only hope of Sunni Arabs to reject a charter they fear could hasten Iraq’s break-up is to muster the two-thirds majority in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
The toll of US military personnel dead in Iraq since the invasion moved inexorably toward the 2,000 mark, with a Marine on Sunday killed in action by small-arms fire during combat operations in Ramadi, the capital of Al-Anbar province.
The latest death brought to 1,997 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualties website. The Pentagon’s casualty figure has not been updated since Friday.
