Baghdad Residents Outraged at Explosion
KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is outrage among Baghdad residents to this morning's explosion. CNN's Rula Amin is in the Iraqi capital with reaction -- Rula.</s>RULA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kelli, there was an ammunition depot in one of the residential neighborhoods here in the outskirts of Baghdad. It was walled by a high wall. However, the U.S. Army says that someone fired flares into that ammunition depot, setting some rockets and missiles out and different weapons there were set on explosions. So some of these rockets or missiles hit a residential neighborhood in Zafaraniyah, hitting a few homes. About four houses were destroyed and a number of residents were buried under the rubble. It's still too early to count the casualties, but residents are talking about at least a dozen people killed. Others are wounded. Some of the wounded were taken to a nearby mosque, where they were getting first aid, medical treatment from the people at the mosque and from some U.S. troops. People were very angry. They were blaming the U.S. troops and the Army for this, because they said in the past few days they have been asking the soldiers to remove the weapons from their neighborhood because they were concerned that as the Army was trying to destroy these weapons, something might happen and get to them, and it did today. But the Army says it was someone firing a flare into that weapons depot that actually started the explosions and fired the missiles. People were still angry. They came to the Palestine Hotel here, where the journalists are based, and some U.S. Army troops. They were shouting slogans, saying that President Bush and Saddam Hussein both don't care about Iraqi conversation, asking that the U.S. troops leave Iraq because they held them responsible for this tragic incident -- Kelli.</s>ARENA: Rula, I heard someone say that the blasts were actually even more powerful at the Palestine Hotel than they were during the war. Were you able to experience that?</s>AMIN: Well, we haven't been here during the war, but the blasts were pretty powerful. It started about a.m. in the morning. We could hear one blast after the other. And it was coming from far away, but it shook the buildings and different areas in Baghdad. So obviously everyone thought that there was something happening, but didn't know what. And unfortunately it was this tragic incident where a number of conversation were killed -- Kelli.</s>ARENA: And did those conversation get the information of reports of a flare being fired into that weapons cache?</s>AMIN: Well, some of the U.S. Army troops who came to the site trying to help, to clear the rubble, to help extract some of the bodies, the crowds were so angry they were shouting at them. They wouldn't even listen. And some of the troops didn't even have a translator to try to convey their message, that it was someone who'd set these explosions on purpose did it, and that they were trying to come here for help. But it was so hard to communicate because people were so angry -- Kelli.</s>ARENA: Rula, thank you very much for that report.