A group affiliated with Abu Musab Zarqawi, the reputed head of al Qaeda in Iraq, asserted responsibility for the bombing in a statement posted on the Internet, according to the Reuters news service. The statement said the explosion was timed to avoid killing Muslims and targeted the hotel because it was a "safe haven and stronghold" of Jews -- repeating a rumor that has circulated around the city recently that some of the hotel's guests were members of Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.
Meanwhile, gunmen attacked the convoy of Planning Minister Mehdi Hafedh in Baghdad, killing two of his bodyguards, according to Iraqi television. Police told news agencies that the minister survived the attack.
An Iraqi soldier stands guard at the site of a suicide bombing in Baghdad that wounded 30 American contractors.
(Khalid Mohammed -- AP)
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Video: A garbage truck, laden with explosives, killed at least three people and injured 40 more in a Baghdad suicide attack.
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A woman who answered the phone in Hafedh's office and described herself as his secretary said the minister was "good. He survived." She declined to give details of the incident.
In another development, the editor of a small daily newspaper in Baghdad said in an interview Wednesday that one of the paper's reporters was detained by U.S. military forces Feb. 28 as he returned from an assignment in the Syrian capital.
Shaker Jabbouri, editor of al-Fourat, said Majed Fadhil Zaboun, who covers cultural affairs, went to Damascus on Feb. 22 to report on a literary conference. He was returning to Baghdad in a taxi and was detained with three other occupants of the vehicle near the Iraqi city of Hit on the main highway between Damascus and Baghdad, Jabbouri said.
The paper contacted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and was told by an official that Zaboun was being held at a U.S. military base near Hit, Jabbouri said. In a second call to the embassy one week ago, Jabbouri said he was told by a U.S. official that the embassy would try to help get Zaboun released.
An embassy spokesman said Wednesday that he had been unable to reach any embassy officials who knew anything about the reporter's detention. A request for information from the U.S. military press office in Baghdad was not immediately answered.
Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group, called for Zaboun's immediate release. "Even in a sensitive theater of operations, it is important that the armed forces continue to respect the work of professional journalists," it said.
Staff writer Caryle Murphy contributed to this report.
