Baghdad, August 19
A massive car bomb devastated the UN headquarters here today, killing at least 20 persons and wounding dozens of others, including the top UN representative in Iraq, witnesses and officials said.

The late-afternoon blast, believed to be a truck bomb and possibly a suicide attack, turned an entire side of the headquarters in Canal Hotel into smouldering chunks of concrete and triggered scenes of chaos.

Fires and a huge plume of smoke rose from the rubble where many were believed trapped in the deadliest attack here since US forces ousted the regime of Saddam Hussein on April 9.

“I saw in front of me 13 dead,” UN spokesperson Veronique Taveau said as she surveyed the burnt-out parking lot in the UN compound in the northeast of the capital.

Seven more people were reported dead and 53 wounded at five hospitals around Baghdad, medical sources said.