BAGHDAD — A huge blast ripped through a portion of central Baghdad Wednesday, destroying a downtown hotel and killing as many as 10 people.
Reports said many other people were under the rubble of the Mt. Lebanon Hotel (search), waiting to be rescued. The hotel is inhabited mostly by Kurds and Egyptians and is located very close to the headquarters of Al Jazeera, the Arab language satellite television station.
It's not yet known what caused the explosion or whether it was a targeted attack. Some witnesses said it could have been a car bomb, others said a rocket. The blast hit around 8 p.m. local time, noon EST.
Many western journalists and other company workers and those with non-governmental organizations stay in hotels in the area.
Two members of the U.S. military rushed to the scene but Iraqis at the site pushed them back from the area.
The blast shook the nearby Palestine Hotel (search), where many foreign contractors and journalists are based. The explosion occurred behind Firdaus Square (search), where a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein was felled April 9 with the help of U.S. Marines who had just entered the center of the Iraqi capital.
Gunfire was heard after the explosion. The hotel sits on the opposite side of the Tigris River from the so-called Green Zone that encompasses the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Nearby houses were also hit. The area of the blast, Karrada, is a mix of business and residential buildings.
"I head an extremely loud explosion as I was eating dinner. You could see it a mile or so away" from the Sheraton Hotel, Fred Barnes, co-host of Fox News' "The Beltway Boys," said from Fox's Baghdad bureau there.
"The fires are still burning, they're taking out dead bodies … or what are presumed to be dead bodies … everybody here believes this wasn't just a mortar."
The U.S. military has told Fox News that from now until June 30, there could be an increase in violence in Iraq.
Some experts said the attack - if it even was one - was likely timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary this week of when the United States launched its military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq.
"I don't think there's any doubt about that at all," said Ret. Col. David Hunt, a Fox News military analyst.
The blast came on the same day that U.S. and Iraqi military forces launched an operation called "Iron Promise" to weed out insurgents and seize illegal weapons in the Baghdad area
In the first raid, about 250 troops from the armored division's 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment as well as 250 Iraqi soldiers fanned out across the sprawling 20th Street Market, in the city's Al-Bayaa district, which sells everything from vegetables to used car parts.
In one car repair shop, U.S. troops found a pair of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and burlap sacks full of grenades. They arrested three men.
Some stores are suspected of supplying weapons to the rebels, said the raid's commander, Lt. Col. Chuck Williams, 40, from Sterling, Va. He said the market assault was the start of a citywide crackdown on the guerrillas.
"There is a lot of pressure everywhere. It is all over town. The big things we are looking for is people moving weapons, IED (improvised explosive device) materials.
Fox News' Todd Connor and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
