IRAQ Car bomb rips U.N. offices

The top U.N. envoy to Iraq was trapped and wounded.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A car bomb ripped through the hotel housing the U.N. headquarters today, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens, including the chief U.N. official in Iraq, who was trapped in the rubble.
A top U.S. official in Iraq said there was evidence to suggest a suicide bomber carried out the attack on the Canal Hotel. An Associated Press reporter could see 40 wounded people lying in the front garden and receiving first aid.
The deaths were reported by Dr. Munas Amer at the nearby al-Kindi Hospital.
The blast came just hours after the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq announced that Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former Iraqi vice president known as "Saddam's knuckles" for his ruthlessness, was turned over to U.S. forces in Mosul.
Ramadan, 65, was captured today by Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and the Arab satellite television station Al-Jazeera said he was disguised in peasant clothing. The former vice president was once considered Iraq's second-most powerful man, but his influence declined in the later years of Saddam Hussein's regime. He was No. 20 on the U.S. most-wanted list of former regime figures.
The scene
A light blue U.N. flag fluttered atop the compound as black smoke rose from at least one burning car after the car bomb. One corner of the building was missing and people were seen sifting through piles of rubble. Injured people were loaded into a helicopter while others were led away by soldiers.
"I can't move. I can't feel my legs and arms. Dozens of people I know are still under the ruins," Majid Al-Hamaidi, 43, a driver for the World Bank, cried out.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who is rebuilding the Iraqi police force, told reporters at the scene that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing.
"There was an enormous amount of explosives in what we believed to be a large truck," Kerik added.
Military ambulances and security forces were at the scene after the late afternoon blast. The top U.N. envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was wounded and among those trapped in the rubble, which destroyed his office.
"They were offering him water so it sounded like he was conscious," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York, citing U.N. officials in Baghdad.
Eckhard said he didn't know how seriously Vieira de Mello, 55, was hurt. A senior UNICEF official also was seriously wounded in the blast, U.N. officials said.
Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian, began a four-month assignment in Baghdad in June and had said his mission was "to make sure that the interests of the Iraqi people come first" in rebuilding their country.
Previous car bomb
The blast came 12 days after a car bomb attack on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad killed 11 people. It was thought to be the first such terrorist-style bombing in the Iraqi capital since Saddam's fall.
In the U.N. blast, one wounded man had a yard-long, inch-thick aluminum rod driven into his face just below his right eye. He identified himself as a security consultant for the International Monetary Fund, saying he had just arrived in the country over the weekend.
Nazar Hababa, the U.N. driver, was covered in blood as he recounted seeing victims in the rubble.
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.
Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Division north of Baghdad, said last month he had warned his troops to prepare for the possibility of car bombings by supporters of Saddam Hussein and other anti-American forces.
"They are going after softer targets, because they know they're ineffective against military targets," Odierno said July 25.
Dozens of U.S. Humvees were at the scene and at least two Black Hawk helicopters hovered above. Black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air.
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.
The United Nations distributes humanitarian aid and is developing programs aimed at boosting Iraq's emerging free press, justice system and monitoring of human rights.
The United States failed to win the backing of the U.N. Security Council before it invaded Iraq on March 20, and since major fighting ended in April, the United States has been reluctant to let the United Nations play a large role in rebuilding the country.
Office building
The Canal Hotel operates more as an office building than a hotel. The cafeteria is a popular place for humanitarian workers and journalists to meet. U.S. officials often were at the compound as well for discussions with their U.N. counterparts.
The three-floor building houses the offices of most U.N. agencies with the exception of UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Before the war, it was home to U.N. weapons inspectors who have hundreds of documents there and a mobile testing lab in the hotel parking lot.
The acting U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the post Vieira de Mello took leave from to go to Iraq, said he was "deeply shocked and outraged" by the attack.
Bertrand Ramcharan, in a statement issued in Geneva, called the attack "a despicable act directed at people whose only aim is to assist the people of Iraq recover from war and years of oppression."