Eight people were killed and 19 others wounded Monday morning in a suicide car bombing at an entrance to the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, witnesses and medical source said.

"We have received eight bodies, all civilians, and 19 other wounded," Hadi Abdul Kareem, head of emergency department in Yarmouk Hospital, told Xinhua.

Kifah Hassan, 35, a female, was seriously wounded when she and her husband were passing by in their car as the bomb exploded. "I don't know what happened to my husband ... people said he might have been killed," Hassan, a mother of three, told Xinhua as she was crying.

Hassan's car was badly charred, according to witnesses. "I was with ten other workers, including two of my brothers, and we were standing at the checkpoint outside the Green Zone, when the blast happened," said Salih Hassan, 28, a worker in the zone who came from Nassiriyah, south of Baghdad.

Salih, who was also seriously wounded, said "all my colleagues were hit ... Some of them were killed and I don't know where my brothers are."

The attack took place at 9:00 AM (06:00 GMT), when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden vehicle to the entrance manned by Iraqi National Guards and blew up his car as he was waiting to be searched, an Iraqi security said.

A US military spokeswoman told reporters that no one from the US-led forces was wounded or killed in the attack. The Green Zone, housing Iraq's interim government offices and US and British embassies, has come under frequent attacks by insurgents bent on undermining the US-back Iraqi interim government.

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2004)