Bombers kill 65 at two mosques in Iraq
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-18 23:09

The attack was the first against a hotel housing international journalists since the Oct. 24 triple vehicle bomb attack against the Palestine Hotel, where The Associated Press, Fox News and other organizations live and work.

In that attack, which killed 17 Iraqis, one of vehicles blew a hole in a concrete wall, opening the way for a cement truck packed with explosives to penetrate the compound. The truck detonated only a few feet into the compound after U.S. troops raked the vehicle with small arms fire and the driver got stuck in debris. A third vehicle went off a short distance away, perhaps as a diversion.

Mike Boettcher of NBC News, who was in the Hamra when Friday's bomb exploded, said on the "Today" show that the blast struck about 8:12 a.m., and "we were blown out of our beds."

"We got down on the floor and crawled, and then the second bomb hit, and we were blown back," Boettcher said. "That blast wall saved our lives."

Saad al-Ezi, an Iraqi journalist with the Globe, also was inside the hotel.

"They were trying to penetrate by displacing the blast barriers behind the hotel and then get to the hotel," he said. "I woke up to a huge explosion which broke all the glass and displaced all the window and doors frames."