Blast rips through Baghdad hotel

As bodies were pulled from the burning rubble of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in the Karrada district witnesses said the casualties included children.

Iraqi police said it appeared to have been a rocket attack but the US said the damage suggested a car bomb.

The hotel is thought to be used mainly by Iraqis and other Arabs.

Reporting the casualty figures, US Army Col Ralph Baker said a number of foreigners were among the victims. He gave no further details.

The blast sent up a column of fire and a huge plume of smoke into the night sky. Frantic relatives gathered as rescue teams searched for survivors and US military helicopters hovered above.

A spokesman for the White House said the new attack would not deter efforts towards "democracy, freedom and stability" in Iraq.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Governing Council, Hamid al-Kefai, blamed the attack on al-Qaeda and said Iraq needed international help to defeat the "enemies of humanity".

The US-led coalition is on high alert this week in the run-up to the first anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq on Saturday.

'Ordinary families'

A witness who spoke to Reuters said he had seen "many, many" bodies.

"I ran down the street and saw many, many people killed," said 30-year-old Abdul Karim. "There were children dead."

Mr Karim said the area was an ethnically mixed one populated by "ordinary families".

The explosion left a crater around seven metres (20 feet) across and 3.5 metres deep in the road outside the hotel.

Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhim said he thought a rocket attack was responsible.

However, US troops said the extent of the damage suggested a car bomb.

"It has to be a car bomb - no rocket could cause that amount of damage," Pfc Heath Balick of the US Army's 1st Armoured Division told AP news agency.

The BBC's Caroline Hawley said the blast had been so powerful, she had dived for cover, despite being based a kilometre away.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3521200.stm