Palestine Hotel
Coordinates: 33 ° 19 ′ N , 44 ° 25 ′ E
The Palestine Hotel is an 18-story hotel in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad .
The building was built in 1982 by the French hotel chain Le Méridien as a 4-star property . It is located directly on Firdaus Square ("Paradise Square "), on which a statue of the dictator Saddam Hussein stood until 2003 . After the embargo following the First Gulf War , Le Méridien parted with its Baghdad hotel. It was taken over by a local hotelier and given its current name, Palestine . During the Third Iraq War in 2003, the hotel was the living and working place of foreign journalists. This is how the German reporters Antonia Rados and Ulrich Tilgner worked at the Palestine .
On April 8, 2003, an American tank shot at the hotel, killing both a cameraman for the Reuters news agency and a journalist for Spanish television. Three other journalists were injured. Apparently the soldiers had mistaken the camera lenses on the hotel balconies for artillery pieces . On October 24, 2005, a bomb detonated in a cement truck next to the hotel. The hotel lobby was destroyed.