Baghdad, Iraq ? Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the three suicide car bombs aimed at the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Baghdad. Deputy Interior Minister Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal said 17 people were killed – mostly hotel guards and passers-by – in Monday’s attack, which involved bombers driving two cars and a cement truck.

The U.S. soldier who shot and killed the truck driver said he initially had a hard time seeing the truck drive through the breach that the first car explosion had created in the concrete wall.

“Once the dust and the debris settled down, I noticed the truck had already breached through our perimeter,” Spc. Darrell Green told CNN American Morning. “He backed up and then pulled forward. As he was doing that, I engaged in machine gun and took out the driver. If he had made it through, he could have done a lot more damage, a lot more casualties than what actually happened.”

In a Web posting, al-Qaida in Iraq said it carried out the hotel attack to target a “dirty harbor of intelligence agents and private American, British and Australian security companies.”