A fireman extinguishes a fire that engulfed a car following an explosion in a restaurant in Baghdad's Karrada district

BAGHDAD, January 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A shattering car bomb rocked a packed Baghdad restaurant late Wednesday, December 31, killing five people and wounding scores others, including several foreigners.

"It was a van loaded with approximately 400 pounds (about 180 kilograms) of explosives and artillery shells. It destroyed a restaurant in central Baghdad in the vicinity of 9.22 pm (1822 GMT)," a spokesman for the U.S.-led occupation forces said.

The blast leveled the restaurant and the building behind it, sending glass flying as its sheer force smashed out windows in a three-block radius, Agence rance-Presse (AFP).

Flames and smoke clotted the night sky, with the blaze engulfing one car by the restaurant.

Sirens wailed as fire engines and police lined the street, while several people wandered around cement rubble in shock, with blood splattered on their clothes and faces.

Witnesses reported seeing several bodies in the rubble of the Nabil restaurant in the upscale Karrada district of Baghdad, which has been hit by two roadside bombs in the past four days that killed three Iraqis, including two children.

Sarmad Mozaffer, a doctor at Ibn Nafiz hospital, said an American and two Britons were among the 24 people injured in the blast.

The Los Angeles Times said three of its reporters and four staff members of the newspaper's Baghdad bureau were wounded but their injuries were not life-threatening.

Musician Fakhry Hekmit, 51, who was in the Nabil restaurant at the time of the blast, said he thought the bomb went off in a building behind, adding that he saw bodies buried under a collapsed building nearby.

"I was here celebrating the New Year, trying to celebrate the New Year, what a sad way to bring in 2004," said Walid Zaynoun, who was smoking a water pipe when the explosion hit.

The deadly attack throttled Baghdad even though Iraqi police and U.S. occupation forces had bolstered security for fear of trouble over the holidays as Iraqi resistance fighters looked to flex their muscles nearly three weeks after the Americans' capture of former president Saddam Hussein.

It was the bloodiest attack since December 27, when five Bulgarian soldiers and two Thais were killed along with 12 Iraqis in a multiple car bomb and mortar attack in the south-central city of Karbala.

More than eight months after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. troops are still meeting stiff resistance, amid intelligence warnings of attacks in the run-up to the New Year holiday.

"Any time we perceive the enemy will try to attack us, to take advantage of one of our holidays or one of our important dates in our history, we always take a posture of extra vigilance," said the commander for the Baghdad region, U.S. Brigadier General Martin Dempsey.

Earlier Wednesday, an Iraqi child was killed and five U.S. soldiers and three Iraqi security officials were wounded when a parked car exploded in central Baghdad as a U.S. military convoy drove by.