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http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/08/19/sprj.irq.main/index.html
Explosion rocks U.N. headquarters in Baghdad
Iraq vice president in U.S. custody
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) --A large explosion ripped through the U.N. headquarters at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad on Tuesday, injuring an unknown number of people, a U.N. spokeswoman told CNN.
The building was evacuated and a CNN cameraman said flames and smoke were rising as medical helicopters hovered overhead.
CNN Correspondent Jane Arraf said security at the hotel had been beefed up considerably but it was still, as a U.N. facility, a softer target than a U.S. military installation.
Meanwhile, a former Iraqi vice president on the coalition's most wanted list is in U.S. custody, Kurdish and U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday.
Taha Yasin Ramadan -- number 20 on the coalition's most wanted list and the 10 of diamonds in the playing card deck of suspects -- was captured by Kurdish fighters in Mosul on Monday and handed over to U.S. forces, sources with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said.
U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Ray Shephard confirmed Ramadan was in U.S. custody but could not confirm details of his capture. Pentagon sources in Washington told CNN that Ramadan had been handed over to U.S. forces.
President Bush, asked to comment on the capture, said he was pleased at the news. "Slowly but surely we'll find who we need to find," Bush told reporters in Crawford, Texas.
Ramadan was the senior of two vice presidents in Saddam Hussein's regime and had been with Saddam since the start of his rise to power.
Ramadan, a Kurd born in Mosul, was linked to almost all of Saddam's brutal campaigns incuding the supression of a 1991 Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq and the use of chemical weapons against his own people in the north.
He is the 36th former Iraqi official on the top 55 list to be captured. Two others on the list are dead, two are suspected possibly dead, and one is described as "status unknown."
He is, like Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim and helped plot and carry out the 1968 coup that brought Saddam to power.
The former leader of the paramilitary Popular Army, Ramadan survived several assassination attempts through the Saddam years.
Ramadan was last seen during the war at a news conference March 29, after a suicide bomber killed four U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint in the town of Najaf.
"This is only the beginning and you will hear more good news in the coming days," Ramadan said at that news conference. "These bastards will be welcomed at the level and in the way they deserve."
"We have the right to use any means," Ramadan said, calling on Iraqis "to attack them in their homes. We can have ... a suicide martyr that can kill 5,000 in one mission," he said.
To avoid that future, Ramadan told the U.S.-led coalition to, "pack your bags and leave us alone."
6 Iraqis killed in explosion
In Tikrit six Iraqis were killed and several wounded in an explosion at an ammunitions dump, U.S. military officials said.
Authorities speculated that the casualties were looters -- poor Iraqis trying to make money by stripping metals from the munitions to sell as scrap.
Also in the Tikrit area, American soldiers opened fire on a group of attackers positioned near an Iraqi ambulance. A man inside the ambulance was wounded by the shooting. It was unknown whether any of the people who opened fire on the U.S. forces were shot.
Bremer: We'll find Saddam
In an interview with CNN Monday, U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer said soldiers are "not sparing any effort to find (Saddam) and root him out, and it will happen one day. We'll wake up and it will have happened."
He said the coalition is taking key steps to fight the guerrillas who have been launching hit-and-run attacks against coalition forces.
"One of them is to obviously put more protection on the key nodes, the places where attacks would have the major impact. We have made a major step to put more Iraqi security forces at play here," he said.
"We have got an Iraqi civil defense force that we're calling into being that (is) going to have eight battalions working on site security and pipeline security, convoy security in the next month or so. We have got almost 40,000 Iraqi police now on duty."
The U.N. refugee agency said another repatriation convoy carrying Iraqi refugees is leaving a camp in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and should arrive in Iraq on Wednesday. There will be 300 refugees in the convoy.
The agency, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said it is "rapidly running out of funds" for its Iraqi operations. It now has $1.4 million and has made a $90 million appeal to fund its operations and "make preparations for the repatriation of larger numbers of refugees beginning in 2004."
Explosion rocks U.N. headquarters in Baghdad
Iraq vice president in U.S. custody
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) --A large explosion ripped through the U.N. headquarters at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad on Tuesday, injuring an unknown number of people, a U.N. spokeswoman told CNN.
The building was evacuated and a CNN cameraman said flames and smoke were rising as medical helicopters hovered overhead.
CNN Correspondent Jane Arraf said security at the hotel had been beefed up considerably but it was still, as a U.N. facility, a softer target than a U.S. military installation.
Meanwhile, a former Iraqi vice president on the coalition's most wanted list is in U.S. custody, Kurdish and U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday.
Taha Yasin Ramadan -- number 20 on the coalition's most wanted list and the 10 of diamonds in the playing card deck of suspects -- was captured by Kurdish fighters in Mosul on Monday and handed over to U.S. forces, sources with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said.
U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Ray Shephard confirmed Ramadan was in U.S. custody but could not confirm details of his capture. Pentagon sources in Washington told CNN that Ramadan had been handed over to U.S. forces.
President Bush, asked to comment on the capture, said he was pleased at the news. "Slowly but surely we'll find who we need to find," Bush told reporters in Crawford, Texas.
Ramadan was the senior of two vice presidents in Saddam Hussein's regime and had been with Saddam since the start of his rise to power.
Ramadan, a Kurd born in Mosul, was linked to almost all of Saddam's brutal campaigns incuding the supression of a 1991 Shiite rebellion in southern Iraq and the use of chemical weapons against his own people in the north.
He is the 36th former Iraqi official on the top 55 list to be captured. Two others on the list are dead, two are suspected possibly dead, and one is described as "status unknown."
He is, like Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim and helped plot and carry out the 1968 coup that brought Saddam to power.
The former leader of the paramilitary Popular Army, Ramadan survived several assassination attempts through the Saddam years.
Ramadan was last seen during the war at a news conference March 29, after a suicide bomber killed four U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint in the town of Najaf.
"This is only the beginning and you will hear more good news in the coming days," Ramadan said at that news conference. "These bastards will be welcomed at the level and in the way they deserve."
"We have the right to use any means," Ramadan said, calling on Iraqis "to attack them in their homes. We can have ... a suicide martyr that can kill 5,000 in one mission," he said.
To avoid that future, Ramadan told the U.S.-led coalition to, "pack your bags and leave us alone."
6 Iraqis killed in explosion
In Tikrit six Iraqis were killed and several wounded in an explosion at an ammunitions dump, U.S. military officials said.
Authorities speculated that the casualties were looters -- poor Iraqis trying to make money by stripping metals from the munitions to sell as scrap.
Also in the Tikrit area, American soldiers opened fire on a group of attackers positioned near an Iraqi ambulance. A man inside the ambulance was wounded by the shooting. It was unknown whether any of the people who opened fire on the U.S. forces were shot.
Bremer: We'll find Saddam
In an interview with CNN Monday, U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer said soldiers are "not sparing any effort to find (Saddam) and root him out, and it will happen one day. We'll wake up and it will have happened."
He said the coalition is taking key steps to fight the guerrillas who have been launching hit-and-run attacks against coalition forces.
"One of them is to obviously put more protection on the key nodes, the places where attacks would have the major impact. We have made a major step to put more Iraqi security forces at play here," he said.
"We have got an Iraqi civil defense force that we're calling into being that (is) going to have eight battalions working on site security and pipeline security, convoy security in the next month or so. We have got almost 40,000 Iraqi police now on duty."
The U.N. refugee agency said another repatriation convoy carrying Iraqi refugees is leaving a camp in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and should arrive in Iraq on Wednesday. There will be 300 refugees in the convoy.
The agency, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said it is "rapidly running out of funds" for its Iraqi operations. It now has $1.4 million and has made a $90 million appeal to fund its operations and "make preparations for the repatriation of larger numbers of refugees beginning in 2004."
