An apparent suicide car bombing rocked a hotel in central Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and Iraqi police said.

The blast took place near the Baghdad Hotel which was believed housing coalition military personnel and officers from the US Central Intelligence Agency.

US troops cordoned off the road and helicopters were hovering in the sky. Ambulances rushed to the scene where two vehicles were in flames.

Alaa Hussein, an eyewitness, told Xinhua that he saw a car trying to enter the passage way to the hotel about 50 meters away from the main street.

The policemen at the checkpoint fired at the car but the vehicle did not stop until running into another car coming out of the hotel and triggered the huge explosion, he added.

Other witnesses recalled the similar occurrence, adding that they saw human flesh about 100 meters away from the site of the bombing.

Sources at the Kindy hospital said 10 people were killed.

Two dozen others were also injured, many of whom were women working at the Zahrat al-Khaleege Investment Bank next to the hotel, said a rescuer at the scene.

Many Baghdadis surrounded the rescuers, inquiring the situation of their beloved ones.

Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV channel reported Mouwafak al-Rubaiy, a Shiite member of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), was slightly injured in the hand.

He was attending a press conference at the 4th floor of the hotel, which has been frequently used by Iraqi and coalition officials for meetings.

Al-Rubaiy said no Americans, and only Iraqi policemen and passers by were killed in the blast, adding that no other IGC members or ministers were at the hotel at the time of the explosion.

According to a Xinhua correspondent at the scene, part of a bank building which is located about 40 meters away from the Baghdad Hotel, collapsed after the bombing.

It was the latest of a wave of suicide bombings that rocked the war-torn country in recent months, during which over 120 people were killed and hundreds of others injured.

Witnesses told Xinhua that another explosion occurred less than an hour later in the Hurriyah Square, one km away from the first one.

No details were immediately known about the second blast. 

(Xinhua News Agency October 13, 2003)