Baghdad, Iraq ? A powerful car bomb ripped through a five-story hotel filled with foreign guests Wednesday evening, killing at least 28 people and destroying nearby apartment houses days before the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

The 8:09 p.m. explosion at the Mount Lebanon Hotel, near Firdaus Square in central Baghdad, created a 20-foot-wide crater, ignited buildings, cars and trees, and sheared the window panes off a hospital across the street. It was the latest and bloodiest in a wave of recent attacks on foreign civilians, eight of whom had been killed in the previous eight days.

At least 45 people, including one American and two British citizens, were injured in the blast, according to the U.S. Army. An Army officer at the scene said the military was still trying to determine the extent of the casualties. “We are scouring the hospitals,” said Lt. Col. Peter Jones of the 1st Armored Division, which has charge of the capital.

Survivors and relatives of the victims stepped through plumes of black smoke, picking at masonry rubble in a search for victims. With the hotel still burning, Iraqi police officers climbed the exposed steps of its upper floors looking for survivors. Firefighters frantically extended a hose to douse flames that lit the night sky a bright orange.

The impact of the blast in Karrada, a busy commercial neighborhood on the east bank of the Tigis River, was felt about a mile away in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation authority.

Hotel for foreigners

The Mount Lebanon Hotel has housed many foreign guests. Several employees of Orascom, an Egyptian firm that runs the only private cell phone service in the Iraqi capital, stayed there recently. In the past, U.N. employees and British and American contractors have stayed there, but a U.N. spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said Wednesday night that only four staff members were in Baghdad and none was at the hotel.

According to CNN, a hotel manager who escaped injury said that two Britons, two Jordanians, two Egyptians, the Lebanese owner of the hotel and about 20 employees were inside at the time of the blast.

The hotel, which was renovated about a year ago, had only two guards and was not protected by the concrete blast barriers that have become a familiar sight around hotels and government buildings in Baghdad.

A huge car bomb destroyed a five-story hotel in central Baghdad, killing at least 28 people. American forces and Iraqi ambulances hurried to the scene to help. Rescuers could be seen pulling bodies from the rubble of the Mount Lebanon Hotel, which was hit just three days before the first anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein.

Several of the hotel’s neighbors said they had worried it could be a terrorist target. “We warned the hotel owner and the guards,” said Bassam Hassoun, 24, who had left work at a carpentry shop next door minutes before the explosion. “They didn’t have concrete blocks in the front of the hotel, just three or four planters for flowers.”

White House reaction

White House press secretary Scott McClellan called the explosion “a terrible terrorist attack on innocent civilians” but said it would not halt Iraq’s progress toward democracy.

“This remains a time of testing in Iraq,” he said. “The stakes are high. The terrorists know the stakes are high, but they will not prevail.”

Col. Ralph Baker of the 1st Armored Division told reporters at the scene that the bomb appeared to have been made from 1,000 pounds of plastic explosive, with artillery shells mixed in to maximize its destructive power.

“It fits the profile of the terrorist organizations we have been combating in the last year,” Baker said. He said the attackers’ tactics were similar to those used by Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist network based in northern Iraq, and Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with reported ties to al-Qaida who is wanted by the U.S.-led occupation authority.

Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, a senior deputy interior minister who oversees the Baghdad traffic police, condemned the attack as the act of a “coward.” He noted that the Baghdad Clinic, the eight-story hospital across from the hotel, was heavily damaged. More than 20 patients were evacuated, including several who were elderly, he said.

“It’s no good for Iraq and no good for any people in the world,” he said at the scene.

Terrorist sweep

The explosion occurred as the U.S. military, joined by Iraqi security forces, launched an effort to arrest suspected terrorists and capture illegal weapons and bomb-making materials in Baghdad. The effort, called Operation Iron Promise, began Tuesday night with a raid on a suspected arms market and other targets.

The operation was intended to take advantage of the large number of U.S. troops in Baghdad. Over the next few weeks, the 1st Armored Division is to return to Germany and hand over control of Baghdad to the 1st Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood, Texas.

The operation also was meant to demonstrate the increasing role of Iraqi forces, including the new U.S.-trained Civil Defense Corps, in maintaining order in the capital.

“It should also be a very clear warning to the extremists in Baghdad not to misinterpret the transfer of authority that’s ongoing here in Baghdad,” said a military spokesman, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. “Over the next few days you’re going to see significant activities by Iraqi forces, outgoing 1st Armored Division forces, incoming 1st Cavalry Division forces, using actionable intelligence to kill and capture enemies of the Iraqi people and enemies of the coalition forces here in Baghdad.”

Earlier Wednesday in Baghdad, a U.S. soldier and two Iraqi children were injured in a bombing in Karrada near Saddoun Street, a commercial artery. The soldier was attending a meeting of the local neighborhood council when the suspected roadside bomb went off around 4:30 p.m., Kimmitt said.