A suspected al Qaeda-linked car bomb shattered a Baghdad hotel and neighboring houses in the heart of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday, killing 27 people and wounding about 40 including some Westerners. U.S. troops and Iraqi rescue services rushed to pull bodies from the rubble of the five-storey Mount Lebanon Hotel, used mainly by Iraqis and Arabs, and the houses as a column of flames and smoke soared into the night sky from the blast. Local residents helped carry away the dead, some with missing body parts. Rescuers, some using their bare hands and torches for light, worked amid pools of blood, broken glass and mangled concrete to find survivors and pull out bodies. Full Story
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