Video captures security fleeing seconds before Baghdad bombing

Baghdad- The Hamra Hotel, used by many foreign journalists, was one of three hotels hit in a coordinated bombing on January 25th. Sixteen Iraqis were reported killed and 33 wounded.

(As always, Baghdad is rife with rumors about the perpetrators and collaborators of these horrific attacks. This video leads an outsider like me to more questions rather than answers, but it does show what others are merely saying.)

This surveillance video, captured from a nearby hotel camera, was used by local police to analyze how Hamra security failed. The video shows what appears to be an initial distraction of the security guards, followed by the immediate failure on the part of the same guards to man the gates and/or block the passage of the bomb-laden vehicle.

The details- 00:40 Policemen can be heard analyzing the security camera video projected on a slide screen. First, they say- "They're shooting at them" (at the hotel guards)... we see the guards gathered towards the far left gate... "Here comes Abu Akhmed (head of security, dressed in black)... "It's calm after the firing"... "Here comes the Peshmerga (the Kurdish guards guarding the President's residency across the street." (who ask why the guards were shooting, the guards respond they were being fired upon.)

It appears that unknown gunmen started shooting to distract the guards, and possibly to waste their ammunition, then the Peshmerga arrive from the far left. Next, the first vehicle, the minibus, 1:05, to arrive at the gates is the bomber. The police ask the video to pause here to try to make out the license plate, which they cannot. The police ask why the normal rolling barrier isn't in place. (Some suspect an early video shows the outside gunmen actually opening the barrier). The guards claim the wheel on the barrier was broken and the hotel ownership refused to fix it.

Guards fleeing just before explosion- The bomber bus goes through unimpeded, 1:20 and immediately after it passes several guards begin running away from the checkpoint. The police say, and so it appears, they were warned by the driver, as in "I'm going to blow up the hotel..."

Rather than trying to stop or shoot him, they immediately begin running for cover. At least four of the guards have been arrested and are being held by the government.

The NYT reported the bomb left a crater 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep about 50 feet from the hotel. A nearby day laborer said he saw men in a car exchange gunshots at the checkpoint outside the compound and watched a second car speed through... but neither of the cars on the video appear to have been shot at.