A SUSPECTED car bomb blew up outside a hotel in central Baghdad shortly after dawn yesterday, killing three Iraqis, wounding several others and ripping the front off the three-storey building, the US army said.

The blast followed a bloody day in Iraq in which six US soldiers and two CNN Iraqi staff were killed. UN chief Kofi Annan had said, however, that if it were safe he would send a team to the country to study the feasibility of early elections. ?We were at our post when a car came rushing at us. We opened fire on it but couldn?t stop it and then it blew up,? Abdulamir Kraybot, a bodyguard for Iraq?s labour minister, who lives in the hotel, told Reuters.

US Secretary of Labour Elaine Chao was due to arrive in Baghdad for a visit on Wednesday. Ambulances rushed to the site of the blast at the Shaheen Hotel, where smoke rose from mangled cars in front of the building, and carried several people to hospital.

The US military said at least one Iraqi was killed in the explosion. Iraqi security staff working at a building opposite the hotel said three people in their office were killed. Doctors at nearby hospitals said they were treating at least five people wounded in the blast, which also blew off the facade of a house across the street and smashed windows in the area.

One security guard at the hotel said the blast was caused by a suicide bomber driving a vehicle that looked like an ambulance. It was not immediately clear what the specific target of the bomb might have been.

Rescuers scoured through the rubble trying to get to anyone else trapped inside the building. ?A car smashed into the front of the hotel and then everything came down around us,? Ibrahim Mahdi, one of the hotel security guards, said.

The explosion comes a little over a week after a car loaded with 500 Kg of explosives detonated outside the main entrance to the US military headquarters in Baghdad killing 25 people and wounding dozens more.

Speaking in Paris on Tuesday amid a surge in violence in Iraq, Annan said that if it was safe he would send a mission to the country to assess whether direct polls would be possible before the United States hands back power to Iraqis in mid-2004.

Joseph Logan