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--- Begin Message --- Title: Good thing the war is over - I mean Bush said so, remember -Caveat Lector-Wolfowitz Escapes Deadly Baghdad Strike ?
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October 26, 2003 08:11 AM EST ?
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - In a daring strike, anti-American forces unleashed a barrage of rockets Sunday against the Al Rasheed Hotel, a symbol of the U.S. presence, where visiting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying. Wolfowitz escaped, but a U.S. soldier was killed and 15 people were wounded.
Scores of American officials living in the hotel fled in pajamas and shorts after the 6:10 a.m. 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 center 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 U.S. soldier was killed and 15 people were wounded, including seven American civilians, four U.S. military personnel and four "non-U.S. coalition civilian partners," according to a statement by the U.S. command.
Wolfowitz, on a three-day Iraq tour, was in the Al Rasheed at the time of the attack, Maj. Paul Swiergosz said at the Pentagon. The hotel houses civilian occupation officials and U.S. 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.
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 Maj. Jossyln Aberle. One crewmember was injured, she said.
"We can confirm the helicopter took fire from an RPG while in the air," Aberle said Sunday. 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, Aberle said.
After the hotel attack, U.S. troops flooded the area, closing off roads around the "green zone," an already heavily guarded district of central Baghdad that includes the palace headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition and the offices of the interim Iraqi Governing Council. The morning clampdown caused monumental traffic jams.
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 here Monday. Officials cited improved security as the reason for ending the curfew.
An Iraqi police commander, who refused to give his name, said the attackers, in a white Chevrolet pickup, had driven down a main road passing a few hundred yards from the hotel and stopped at the edge of the city's main Zawra Park and Zoo. Security guards of the new Facilities Protection Service spotted the activity.
"We approached him (the driver) to tell him to move the car. When he saw us, he fled," one of the injured guards, Jabbar Tarek, said at a nearby hospital.
As Tarek and others approached, the rockets fired off from the blue trailer, police said. Tarek said the guards weren't armed, or "I would have fired on him."
Later Sunday morning, U.S. soldiers could be seen removing at least two 3-foot-long rockets from the trailer, located about 500 yards southwest of the hotel.
"There is no guarantee we can protect against this kind of thing unless we have soldiers on every block," said Lt. Brian Dowd of Nanuet, N.Y., a 1st Armored Division reconnaissance officer at the scene.
Barely a mile away, the road crosses the Tigris River at the 14th of July Bridge, which U.S. authorities reopened Saturday for the first time since the city fell to American troops in April. As with the end of curfew, coalition officials cited improved security for the decision to reopen the traffic artery.
Iraqi security guard Dafer Jawad, 28, said that from the convention center he saw projectiles flying toward the hotel.
"There was a whooshing sound," he said. "One landed in the front of the hotel. I saw very heavy white smoke in front of the hotel.... Many people started rushing across from the hotel into the Convention Center."
The hotel also was attacked Sept. 27 with small rockets or rocket-propelled grenades, causing only minimal damage.
Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, arrived in Iraq on Friday. After Sunday's attack, he said the U.S.-led coalition was achieving success in stabilizing Iraq despite actions of "criminals who are trying to destabilize this country."
"We are taking this fight to the enemy," he said. "We are getting the job done."
U.S. officials had warned that "Islamic extremists" planned to carry out a suicide bombing attack against an unspecified hotel in the city's Karrada district used by Westerners. But the warning did not specify a target, and the Al Rasheed is not in that district.
A car bomb on Oct. 12 against the Baghdad Hotel, also used by U.S. officials, killed eight people, including the bomber, but security measures prevented the vehicle from reaching the building before it exploded.
The Black Hawk helicopter came down at about 4 p.m. Saturday. Only one U.S. helicopter has been confirmed shot down by hostile fire since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1. A U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter was shot down June 12 by hostile fire in western Iraq. The craft's two crewmembers were rescued unhurt.
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Copyright 2003 Associated Press
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