The explosion occurred about 12:30 p.m. local time, about an hour before students were to be dismissed for lunch.

"I was in my room (in the interior of the school) when I heard the explosion and all the glass breaking," Halima Kazam told an American reporter. "All the children were against the walls or on the floor, screaming and crying and then trying to get out."

Halima, speaking through an interpreter, said the children were taken out through a gate on the opposite side of the building to avoid flames and smoke and the chance that there may have been a second bomb placed to kill first responders.

Jassim Khadam, a taxi driver living across the road from the school, said the car holding the bomb was parked nose-in to the school's perimeter next to an entrance mainly used by faculty.

"I came home for lunch about 10 minutes before the bombing," he said. "I saw the car and just thought it belonged to one of the teachers."

The exact number of casualties couldn't be immediately determined. People outside the school said only about five were hurt, but a school administrator said the number was 20. Five of them were staff at the combined middle school and high school facility.

When an American reporter arrived on the scene 20 minutes after the blast with Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel from the U.S. Army's 1st Battalion, 68 Armor Regiment, the injured had been taken away and fires caused by the bomb put out.

The scene was eerily quiet. Crowds stood and watched from a distance, kept at bay by U.S. troops and Iraqi police; the bomb vehicle -- its metal all pushed forward into a tangled ball -- smoldered as U.S. and Iraqi bomb experts combed debris for evidence. Nearby on either side of the bombing vehicle, and the hole in the pavement underneath where its trunk would have been, were cars that caught fire as a result of the blast and were destroyed.

Halima sat alone on a chair in the middle of the ground floor hallway of the school. She sat without moving, expressionless except for the look of shock and trauma.

The attack was the first using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in 90 days in the eastern portion of the battalion's 50-square-mile sector. That eastern portion is predominantly Shiite and close to Sadr City, where U.S. troops had battled extremists loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr in the spring. Sadr, in Iran, later officially disbanded his Mehdi Army militia, whose leaders fled to Iran. Leaders of Iranian-influenced Special Groups also left Sadr City for Iran, according to U.S. military sources.

In the western portion of the sector, which includes Sunni enclaves penetrated by al-Qaida and mixed sectarian areas such as Old Adhamiya, Mahgrib and Waziriyah, there have been six VBIEDs in 90 days, including one Monday in an area lined with cafes. Five people were killed in that attack and at least 34 injured, according to Iraqi and U.S. authorities. Initial news reports had put the death toll at 28.

The bombing Monday had all the hallmarks of al-Qaida: a VBIED, two smaller anti-personnel devices planted nearby to kill first responders and placement in an area crowded with civilians.

No responsibility has yet been claimed for Wednesday's attack at Beida School. Iraqi and U.S. investigators are still looking at evidence.

First word of the blast Wednesday came on a surveillance monitor at a U.S. base called Callahan, about a kilometer or less from the school. An explosion was seen by a camera that then zoomed in. As smoke billowed on the scene, people could be seen running and screaming.

"Tell the principal I'm going to come in and scope out the damage," Lt. Col. Michael Pappel said. "Tell him we want to get repairs done quickly, so the children can get back to classes."

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