In one of the most audacious attacks yet on the US-led administration in Iraq, resistance fighters fired a rocket salvo at the Rashid hotel in Baghdad yesterday, narrowly missing Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, who had been staying there.
The attack at 6am killed a US army colonel, and injured 18 others, including a British Treasury official. Wolfowitz, one of the authors of the war to remove Saddam Hussein, was visibly shaken by the attack, which struck yards from his room on the 12th floor. An Iraqi governing council spokesperson told the Guardian it had been ”a near miss”.
Last night at least two explosions detonated in an area of Baghdad that includes the administration headquarters, the US military said.
An Iraqi policeman said that an unknown assailant fired a rocket propelled grenade at a US convoy next to the Mansour hotel, about a mile north-east of the Rashid. There were no casualties.
A drawn-looking Wolfowitz had appeared earlier in the day to denounce the attack and express sympathy for the victims. He said the US-led coalition would not be deterred from its mission to restore stability and democracy to Iraq, but that threats remained ”as long as there are criminals out there staging hit and run attacks”.
Between eight and 10 rockets hit the Rashid, which houses several hundred US military personnel and civilians working with the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Guests said they felt shockwaves powerful enough to throw several out of bed. A coalition spokesperson said the guests, some in pyjamas, were evacuated, following the wounded who were carried out by colleagues and emergency medical workers.
Smoke filled some of the upper floors and the explosions reverberated across the city.
Yesterday’s strikes will unnerve US officials facing an upsurge in attacks in the run-up to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator of Iraq, in Washington for consultations, made an unusual admission during an interview with ABC Television. He said: ”I think we have to recognise that, as time goes on, being occupied becomes a problem.”
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said: ”We are in this insurgency situation where people strike and run and it’s a much more difficult security environment. We did not expect this would be quite this intense for so long.”
The rockets were fired from an improvised launcher made to look like a mobile generator which was parked 400 metres away from the hotel. Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armoured Division, said the launch platform had also been booby trapped.
Two Iraqi policeman outside the perimeter fence were also injured when two of the rockets fell short.
The Rashid lies within a heavily fortified complex bordering the Tigris river that includes the former palace of Saddam Hussein, which is now the nerve centre of the CPA led by Bremer.
The area, protected by razor wire, sandbags and concrete blast barriers, also houses offices of the Iraqi governing council.
In what military authorities suggest may have been a trial run, the hotel was hit on September 27 by a number of small missiles that caused minimal damage and no casualties.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK special envoy to Iraq, confirmed that one Briton was among those injured yesterday. Jacob Nell, on attachment to the CPA from the Treasury, went to hospital for treatment of mainly superficial wounds.
Gen Dempsey said he did not believe that Wolfowitz, who was touring Iraq to assess ways of defeating the six-month-old insurgency, was the target of yesterday’s attack.
”I think it had been planned for at least a month,” he said. ”And no one knew Mr Wolfowitz’s itinerary.”
The attack came a day after a US army Black Hawk helicopter crash-landed near the northern city of Tikrit after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. – Guardian Unlimited Â