A powerful car bomb killed at least six people outside a central Baghdad hotel used by US officials, injuring many and filling the air with thick black smoke, police said.
Eyewitnesses said they saw a car crash through the security barrier at the Baghdad Hotel and explode. The hotel is widely thought to be used by members of the CIA, officials of the US -led coalition, their Iraqi partners in the Governing Council as well as US contractors.
A policeman at the scene said at least six people had been killed. Hotel employees said five or six bodies lay in the hotel courtyard.
At a nearby hospital, a Reuters photographer saw more than a dozen wounded, many seriously. Several were Iraqi policemen.
Sirens wailed as ambulances and fire engines rushed to the scene. The lower floor of the building next door was on fire.
An Iraqi eyewitness said he saw a white car crash through the security barrier.
"I saw a car coming towards the hotel. One of the guards opened fire and it exploded," Nael Murkos said.
US helicopters circled overhead minutes after the blast, obscured by the thick smoke. Dozens of Iraqi police raced to the scene.
Guests were seen leaving the hotel carrying suitcases. They were uninjured but said their rooms had been destroyed.
Soldiers and plain-clothes officials in US flak jackets carrying AK-47 rifles swarmed the street outside the hotel.
"I was driving beside the hotel when a white car suddenly crashed through the security barrier and exploded," Iraqi eyewitness Mr Sabah Ghulam said.
The blast shook windows several blocks away. It was the latest in a series of attacks aimed at Western targets in Iraq, which the US blames on guerrillas resisting the US-led occupation.
On Thursday, two suicide bombers crashed their car through the gates of a police station in northeast Baghdad, killing at least eight other Iraqis.
Last month, a suicide car bomb attack outside the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad killed a security guard. A bomb was also detonated outside a hotel used by US television network NBC, killing a security guard.
In August, a suicide bomber crashed a truck packed with explosives into the United Nations compound, killing 22 people including the head of mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Earlier that month, a car bomb outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad killed 17 people.