Canal Hotel bombing
The Canal Hotel bombing was a suicide truck bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, in the afternoon of August 19, 2003. It killed at least 22 people, including the United Nations' Special Representative in Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and wounded over 100, including human rights lawyer and political activist Dr. Amin Mekki Medani. The blast targeted the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq created just five days earlier.
The 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 al-Zarqawi, the leader of terrorist organization Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, in April 2004 claimed responsibility for the 19 August blast.
Bombing
In his book The Prince of the Marshes, British politician and writer Rory Stewart recounts his experiences at the Canal Hotel on the day of the bombing.The explosion occurred while Martin Barber, director of the UN's Mine Action Service, 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. 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 United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Humanitarian Information Centre for Iraq 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 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 could be removed.
According to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Vieira de Mello was specifically targeted in the blast. The reason given by al-Zarqawi for targeting Vieira de Mello was that he had helped East Timor become an independent state. Zarqawi said that Vieira de Mello had participated in the unlawful removal of territory from the Islamic Caliphate and was therefore a thief and a criminal.
Second bomb
The bombing was followed on September 22, 2003, by another car bomb outside the Canal Hotel. The blast killed the bomber and an Iraqi policeman and wounded 19 others, including UN workers. The second attack led to the withdrawal of some 600 UN international staff from Baghdad, along with employees of other aid agencies. In August 2004, de Mello's replacement, Ashraf Qazi, arrived in Baghdad along with a small number of staff.List of victims
| Name | Age | Nationality | Position |
| Sérgio Vieira de Mello | 55 | Brazil | Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Iraq |
| Nadia Younes | 57 | Egypt | Chief of Staff for Vieira de Mello |
| Fiona Watson | 35 | United Kingdom | Member of Vieira de Mello's staff, political affairs officer |
| Jean-Sélim Kanaan | 33 | Egypt France | Member of Vieira de Mello's staff, political officer |
| Richard Hooper | 40 | Senior advisor to the UN Under-Secretary-General for the Department of Political Affairs | |
| Manuel Martín-Oar | 56 | Spain | Naval captain, assistant to the Spanish special ambassador to Iraq |
| Christopher Klein-Beekman | 32 | Canada | UN Children's Fund's program coordinator |
| Reham Al-Farra | 29 | Jordan | Department of Public Information, Deputy Spokesperson |
| Martha Teas | 47 | UNOHCI Manager | |
| Leen Assad Al-Qadi | 32 | UNOHCI Information Assistant | |
| Ranillo Buenaventura | 47 | Philippines | UNOHCI Secretary for Vieira de Mello |
| Reza Hosseini | 43 | Iran | UNOHCI Humanitarian affairs officer |
| Ihsan Taha Husein | 26 | UNOHCI Driver | |
| Basim Mahmoud Utaiwi | 40 | UNOHCI Security guard | |
| Raid Shaker Mustafa Al-Mahdawi | 32 | United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission | |
| Gillian Clark | 47 | Canada | Christian Children's Fund |
| Arthur Helton | 54 | Director of peace and conflict studies at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations | |
| Dr. Alya Ahmad Souza | 54 | World Bank | |
| Khidir Saleem Sahir | Civilian | ||
| Saad Hermis Abona | 33 | Working for a UN subcontractor | |
| Omar Kahtan Mohamed Al-Orfali | 34 | Driver/interpreter, Christian Children's Fund | |
| Emaad Ahmed Salman al-Jobody | 45 | Electrician |
Marilyn Manuel, a member of Vieira de Mello's staff from the Philippines, was originally listed as missing and presumed dead in the collapsed section of the building. However, she had been evacuated to an Iraqi hospital which did not notify the UN of her presence. Her survival was confirmed four days later.
American Marines occupied the building
Suspects
In an audiotape, published 6 April 2004 on a website and "probably authentic" according to CIA, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed credit for a number of attacks, including the 19 August 2003 bombing on U.N. quarters in Baghdad.By December 2004, also
The Jamestown Foundation considered Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad responsible for this attack.
In February 2006, the TV programme FRONTLINE presented an audiotape of Zarqawi—possibly the tape of April 2004—in which Zarqawi motivated the bombing of the UN building: U.N. = "protectors of Jews and friends of the oppressors".
In January 2005, a top bombmaker for Zarqawi's group, Abu Omar al-Koordi, was captured by the coalition and claimed his associates made the bomb used in the attack. On December 16, 2005, Iraqi authorities issued an arrest warrant for Mullah Halgurd al-Khabir, a commander of Ansar al-Sunna, in connection with the attack.
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera identified the suicide bomber as Algerian national Fahdal Nassim. Other suspects included Baathists, militant Sunni and Shiite groups, organized crime, and tribal elements. Blame was initially thought to lie with Ansar al-Islam, which was thought at the time to be Zarqawi's group. An otherwise unknown group called the "Armed Vanguards of the Second Mohammed Army" claimed they were responsible for the attack.
Awraz Abd Aziz Mahmoud Sa'eed, known as al-Kurdi, has confessed to helping plan the attack for Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. Al-Kurdi was captured by U.S. forces in 2005, judged and sentenced to death by an Iraqi court and executed by hanging on July 3, 2007.
Responses
The suicide bombing of the United Nations in Baghdad drew overwhelming condemnation. Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, commented that the bombing would not stop the organization's efforts to rebuild Iraq, and said: "Nothing can excuse this act of unprovoked and murderous violence against men and women who went to Iraq for one purpose only: to help the Iraqi people recover their independence and sovereignty, and to rebuild their country as fast as possible, under leaders of their own choosing."However, since this event the UN country team's expatriates and leaders relocated in Amman and continued to work remotely. Only some Iraqis have continued under drastic security measures all around the country. Few expatriates are, 5 years later, authorized to go inside Iraq and only inside huge security compounds such as the so-called "Green Zone" in Baghdad. Humanitarian support is now entirely conducted inside the country by NGOs, under UN remote supervision.
In 2004, Gil Loescher's daughter, documentary filmmaker Margaret Loescher, made a critically acclaimed film about her father's experiences called Pulled from the Rubble.