POROUS BORDERS

The suicide bomber who struck the Baghdad Hotel earlier this month spoke a different dialect of Arabic than Iraqis, the first solid indication that foreign fighters are involved in recent car bombings here, senior Iraqi officials say.

Moments before detonating his bomb, the driver exchanged a few words with an Iraqi policeman guarding a checkpoint outside the hotel, according to two Iraqi Interior Ministry officials. The policeman, who was injured in the attack, told investigators that, by his dialect, the man sounded like he was from Saudi Arabia or Yemen.