Missile hits US base in Iraq

A missile landed in the sprawling US compound in central Baghdad tonight but caused little damage, a US spokesman said. Unconfirmed reports said one person was injured.

The projectile “believed to be a rocket, impacted in the vicinity of the Al-Rasheed Hotel,” said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The missile caused an explosion heard up to two miles away and immediately sirens were activated in the compound, known as ”green zone.”

“We have an unconfirmed report of one person being injured. No other significant damage was reported” and officials were investigating the attack, the spokesman said.

The “green zone” has several offices and residences of the US military and civilian authorities involved in governing Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April last year.

It also contains the former luxury Al-Rasheed Hotel, now unoccupied.

Saddam loyalists have carried out several attacks against the US forces, mostly in central Iraq, but the intensity has reduced since the former dictator’s capture last month.

In October several mortars and rockets were fired into the ”green zone,” including a barrage at the Al-Rasheed Hotel in which a US lieutenant colonel was killed and 18 people were wounded.

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, was in the hotel at the time but escaped injury. The hotel was evacuated after that attack and remains unused except for a coffee shop.

A suicide bomb attack on Sunday at the edge of the “green zone” killed at least 31 people and injured more than 120.