Top US official escapes rocket attack on Baghdad hotel

IN a daring strike, anti-American forces unleashed a barrage of rockets yesterday against the Al Rasheed Hotel, a symbol of the US presence, where visiting Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying.

Mr Wolfowitz escaped, but a US soldier was killed and 15 people were wounded.

Scores of American officials living in the hotel fled in pyjamas and shorts after the 6.10am assault, which apparently used a makeshift rocket battery on a timer that had been wheeled into a nearby park. More than a half-dozen holes pockmarked the hotel’s concrete facade and windows were shattered in two dozen rooms.

Wolfowitz, who appeared shaken as he addressed reporters at a convention centre across the street where most officials fled, vowed the attack would not deter the United States in its mission to transform Iraq.

“There are a few who refuse to accept the reality of a new and free Iraq,” he said. “We will be unrelenting in our pursuit of them.”

One US soldier was killed and 15 people were wounded, including seven American civilians, four US military personnel and four “non-US coalition civilian partners”, according to a statement by the US command.

Mr Wolfowitz, on a three-day Iraq tour, was in the Al Rasheed at the time of the attack, Major Paul Swiergosz said at the Pentagon.

The hotel houses civilian occupation officials and US military forces. The heaviest damage was on what appeared to be the fifth and eighth floors of the modern, 18-story building.

The attackers had boldly driven to the edge of a park just 500 yards southwest of the hotel, towing what looked like a portable, two-wheeled generator, Iraqi police said.

They quickly fled, and rockets suddenly ignited within the trailer, apparently on a timer, flashing toward the nearby hotel. Their impact resounded across central Baghdad. Three approaching security guards were injured by the ignition blast, police said.

Mr Wolfowitz, expressing “profound sympathy” for the victims, said danger persists in Iraq “as long as there are criminals out there staging hit-and-run attacks”.

Just a day earlier, and only hours after the deputy secretary left the 4th Infantry Division base at Tikrit, north of Baghdad, a division helicopter crash-landed after insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade near the base.

The Black Hawk pilot managed to maintain control after the hit and crash-landed, said division spokeswoman Major Jossyln Aberle. One crewmember was injured.

“We can confirm the helicopter took fire from an RPG while in the air,” Aberle said yesterday. She said the division quick response team managed to “detain two persons responsible for firing the RPG”. They still had the launcher with them at the time of capture, said Aberle.

The rockets were fired two hours after coalition authorities ended the nighttime curfew in the Iraqi capital in preparation for the Muslim holy month, Ramadan, which begins today.

Officials cited improved security as the reason for ending the curfew. The hotel also was attacked on September 27 with small rockets or rocket-propelled grenades, causing only minimal damage.

Mr Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, arrived in Iraq on Friday. After yesterday’s attack, he said the US-led coalition was achieving success in stabilising Iraq despite “criminals who are trying to destabilise this country”.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell condemned the attack and said the United States had not expected the level of attacks being staged in the country after the war.