A powerful car bomb killed at least 10 people outside a central Baghdad hotel used by US officials yesterday, injuring many and filling the air with dust and thick black smoke, police said.

Eyewitnesses said they saw a car crash through the security barrier at the Baghdad Hotel and explode. The hotel is widely thought to be used by members of the CIA, officials of the US -led coalition and their Iraqi partners in the Governing Council as well as US contractors.

A policeman at the scene said at least ten people had been killed. Hotel employees said five or six bodies lay in the hotel courtyard.

At a nearby hospital, a photographer saw a dozen wounded, many seriously. Several were Iraqi policemen. It was not immediately clear whether there were any US casualties.

Sirens wailed as ambulances and fire engines rushed to the scene. The bomb blew a crater three metres (yards) by three metres into the road. A concrete bomb wall protecting the hotel was blown over by the force of the blast. The lower floor of the building next door was on fire.

Buildings shaken

One witness said security guards opened fire on a car. A second car then drove up and exploded. US helicopters circled overhead minutes after the blast, obscured by the thick smoke. Dozens of Iraqi police raced to the scene. Shop windows all along the street were shattered and buildings were shaken several blocks away. Guests were seen leaving the hotel carrying suitcases. They were uninjured but said their rooms had been destroyed. Soldiers and plain-clothes officials in US flak jackets carrying AK-47 rifles swarmed the street outside the hotel.

The attack was the latest in a series aimed at Western targets in Iraq, which the US blames on guerrillas resisting the American.-led occupation. Iraqis seen as cooperating with the administration have also been attacked.

On Thursday, two suicide bombers crashed their car through the gates of a police station in northeast Baghdad, killing at least eight other Iraqis. Last month, a suicide car bomb attack outside the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad killed a security guard. A bomb was also detonated outside a hotel used by US television network NBC, killing a security guard.

In August, a suicide bomber crashed a truck packed with explosives into the United Nations compound, killing 22 people including the head of mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Earlier that month, a car bomb outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad killed 17 people.

One woman who failed to get past a police roadblock to see if her two daughters, who worked at a nearby bank, were alive, sat with her head in her hands. ?To hell with the family of Saddam Hussein,? she said. ?He is the one who did this.?

Brian Williams Michael Georgy