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The Canal Hotel Bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, in the afternoon of August 19, 2003, killed at least 22 people, including the United Nations' Special Representative in Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and wounded over 100. The blast targeted the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq created just 5 days earlier. (The United Nations had used the hotel as its headquarters in Iraq since the early 1990s.) That 19 August bombing resulted in the withdrawal within weeks of most of the 600 UN staff members from Iraq. These events were to have a profound and lasting impact on the UN's security practices globally. The attack was followed by a suicide car bomb attack on 22 September 2003 near U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing a security guard and wounding 19 people. Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of terrorist organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, in April 2004 claimed responsibility for the 19 August blast. ==The bombing== In his book ''The Prince of the Marshes'', British writer Rory Stewart recounts his experiences at the Canal Hotel the day of the bombing. The explosion occurred while Martin Barber, director of the UN's Mine Action Service (UNMAS), was holding a press conference. The explosion damaged a spinal cord treatment center at the hospital next door and a U.S. Army Civil-Military Operations Centre located at the rear of the Canal Hotel, and the resulting shockwave was felt over a mile away. The blast was caused by a suicide bomber driving a truck bomb. The vehicle has been identified as a large 2002 flatbed Kamaz (manufactured in Eastern Europe and part of the former Iraqi establishment's fleet). Investigators in Iraq suspected the bomb was made from old munitions, including a single 500-pound aerial bomb, from Iraq's pre-war arsenal. The OCHA Humanitarian Information Centre (HIC) for Iraq (UNOHCI) was located directly beneath the office of Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and suffered a direct hit. Of the eight staff and one visitor in the office at the time, seven were killed instantly, but Sérgio Vieira de Mello and Gil Loescher were critically wounded and trapped in debris under the collapsed portion of the building. An American soldier – First Sergeant William von Zehle – crawled down through the collapsed building and worked to extricate the two men. He was joined later by another American soldier – Staff Sergeant Andre Valentine – and the two men spent the next three hours trying to extricate the two survivors without benefit of any rescue equipment. Loescher was rescued after having his crushed legs amputated by the soldiers, but Vieira de Mello died before he would have been able to have been removed.〔(OCHA bulletin ) tribute.〕 According to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, de Mello was specifically targeted in the blast. The reason given by al-Zarqawi for targeting de Mello was that he had helped East Timor become an independent state (see the Indonesian occupation of East Timor). Zarqawi said that de Mello had participated in the unlawful removal of territory from the Islamic Caliphate and was therefore a thief and a criminal.〔(Black Triangle » The UN bombers )〕〔(Don't bother looking for explanations for terrorist attacks. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Canal Hotel bombing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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