Second attack on Baghdad hotel

A hotel used by Western contractors and journalists in the Iraqi capital Baghdad came under attack for the second time in 24 hours today but there were no injuries.

Violence flared again around dawn Christmas morning when at least two explosions and gunfire erupted in central Baghdad. One projectile hit the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel, the same hotel that was targeted yesterday evening. Some windows shattered, but there were no injuries.

The earlier attack on the hotel also injured no one because the 60mm direct-lay mortar shell hit a barrier, or outer wall, on the heavily barricaded 19-storey building, said Captain Jason Beck of the US Army’s 1st Armoured Division.

Iraqi security guarding the hotel immediately fired on the attackers, who fled. Early today, distant explosions were heard in central Baghdad as the US military bombarded suspected rebel positions.

The hotel attack, which rattled windows for blocks, followed a string of separate bombings that killed six civilians and a suicide bomber in addition to a three US soldiers.

The soldiers died when a roadside bomb exploded north of Baghdad – the deadliest attack on coalition forces since former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s capture.

Early today, the military announced that a fourth US soldier was killed a day earlier by a bomb in north-central Baghdad.

Until yesterday, US military commanders had said the number of daily rebel attacks were slowing in recent weeks – even as they braced for increased violence around the Christmas holiday.

The day’s fighting began before dawn, when the 1st Armoured Division unleashed an artillery barrage on three rebel targets in south west Baghdad, aided by Air Force jet fighters and gunships.

Elsewhere, US troops continued their stepped-up raids on homes in several towns that led to the arrest of a Sunni sheikh said to be close to the most wanted man in Iraq. Troops rounded up dozens of guerrilla suspects saying they were capitalising on intelligence from interrogations and documents seized in the December 13 capture of Saddam.