The New Year's Eve car-bomb attack on a Baghdad restaurant killed up to eight people and wounded more than 30, US military investigators said yesterday as they hunted for clues among the rubble.
The bomb devastated the upmarket Nabil restaurant, popular with foreigners and wealthy Iraqis, about 2½ hours before midnight, scattering debris and wrecked cars across the street outside and sparking a blaze.
"Right now the death toll we believe is six to eight with at least 30 walking wounded who were treated at local hospitals," Lieut Col Peter Jones, the senior US officer at the scene, said outside the ruined building.
The dead were all Iraqis and the wounded included three foreign journalists with the Los Angeles Times.
Lieut Col Jones said the blast was caused by a car bomb parked next to the restaurant.
Owners of many upmarket Baghdad restaurants yesterday said they were considering stopping the sale of wine and alcohol, hoping this would reduce the number of foreigners coming in and avoid attracting the attention of the guerrillas.
Although Iraq is overwhelmingly Muslim, there are only minimal restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol in the country.
Meanwhile in Washington, officials said they would replace almost all the troops in Iraq over the next five months, one of the most extensive logistical exercises the Pentagon has undertaken.
A total of 123,000 US troops will be pulled out of Iraq and replaced with about 110,000 fresh soldiers and marines.
Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the rotation "a logistics feat that will rival any in history".
"So there's going to be a lot of turbulence in the system, as you would expect," Gen Myers told reporters.
Since the invasion of Iraq in March, 327 US troops have been killed in action, 212 of them victims of guerrilla attacks after May 1st, when Washington declared major combat over.
But as coalition troops have stepped up their guard, the guerrillas, mostly Saddam loyalists and foreign Muslim militants, have shifted to strikes on Iraqi and foreign civilians.
US commanders had feared guerrillas would launch attacks over the new year period to send a message that they would press on with their campaign to drive out occupying troops despite the capture of Saddam.
"We always take a posture of extra vigilance on key dates in the calendar," Brig Gen Martin Dempsey, commander of the US 1st Armoured Division responsible for security in Baghdad, said on Wednesday.
"We have only one new year's resolution and that is to remain resolute in our efforts to provide safety and security to the Iraqi people," he added.
In northern Iraq, a US military helicopter was forced to land yesterday after an apparent mechanical failure and some soldiers may have been injured, a US military spokesman said.
"It was potentially a bit more than a precautionary landing, perhaps a hard landing with some injuries . . . most likely it was a technical failure," he said.
Asked if the helicopter had come under fire, he said: "There is no suggestion [of that\] at this time."
British Airways (BA) cancelled one of its three daily flights yesterday from London-Heathrow airport to Washington DC following security warnings from the government.
More than 180 passengers were affected.
The same flight, BA 223, was held on the tarmac for several hours when it arrived at Washington Dulles International airport on Wednesday. American officials questioned all the passengers and crew on board. - (Reuters, Guardian service)