Rockets Hit Wolfowitz Iraq Hotel; U.S. Soldier Dies

News, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Sun October 26, 2003 02:33 PM ET

By Carol Giacomo and Ian Simpson BAGHDAD (Reuters) -

Iraqi Guerrillas fired rockets on Sunday into a Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding 17 people in an attack on the heart of American power in Iraq.

Wolfowitz escaped unhurt from the strike on the Rashid Hotel, inside a heavily fortified compound that also houses the headquarters of Iraq's U.S.-led administration. He vowed the United States would not be cowed into abandoning Iraq.

Late Sunday evening, at least two more explosions were heard in the same area of central Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Wolfowitz was believed to have left the Rashid by then.

A soldier guarding the area said he believed the explosions had been caused by mortar rounds which landed somewhere near the administration building, housed in a former palace of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

The early morning attack on the hotel undermined Washington's claim that it is steadily defeating the guerrillas who have killed 109 U.S. soldiers since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.

Eight to 10 rockets crashed into the hotel at about 6 a.m. (0300 GMT), sending explosions echoing across the city and throwing several guests from their beds.

A U.S. soldier assigned to the occupying administration was killed, officials said. Four other U.S. soldiers, seven American civilians and four civilians from other members of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq were among the wounded, they said.

Some people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers and others walked away spattered with blood after the missiles destroyed rooms on stories below Wolfowitz's on the 12th floor, witnesses said.

One 11th-floor room was destroyed, according to a journalist who saw the devastation. Part of the ceiling collapsed, the door was blown off, a hole was punched in the wall and smoke poured from the room.

Wolfowitz, an architect of the U.S. "war on terror" and a force behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was led away by security personnel. He appeared composed after descending a stairwell past thickening smoke and blood stains with a fire alarm blaring, witnesses said. But he looked shaken when he addressed reporters a few hours later.

DETERMINED TO 'COMPLETE MISSION'

"These terrorist attacks will not deter us from completing our mission, which is to help the Iraqi people free themselves from the types of criminals who did this and protect the American people from this kind of terrorism," an unshaven Wolfowitz said in a trembling voice.

The U.S. administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said during a visit to Washington for consultations that he had ordered a full investigation into the attack.

"I've asked for a complete investigation into this, obviously, and my security people are looking at it," he said on "Fox News Sunday" television.

He said he might withdraw from the Rashid some of the several hundred people working for him who stay there.

Guerrillas fired the rockets from a home-made launcher disguised as a power generator, about 400 yards from the hotel, U.S. defense officials said. Another 11 rockets were still inside the launcher, they added.

U.S. officials said the launcher was on a blue trailer that pulled into a side street near a park a few minutes before the attack. The rockets were launched using a timer, they said.

Troops arriving at the scene soon after the attack found the launcher was booby trapped, said Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division responsible for security in Baghdad.

DRESSING FOR BREAKFAST

Members of Wolfowitz's traveling party had been dressing for a breakfast meeting. In a hotel corridor, survivors waded calf-deep through water from a burst pipe.

Dempsey said he did not believe the attack was aimed specifically at Wolfowitz as it had probably been planned long before the Pentagon official's trip was scheduled.

But Iraqis angry at U.S. occupation expressed regret at what they saw as a failed assassination attempt.

"I wish Wolfowitz had been killed. I wish all Americans here would be killed," said Ali Hussein, a grocer in central Baghdad. "The Americans are not human beings, they are monsters. They lied to the Iraqi people."

Guerrilla attacks have targeted the United Nations, the Jordanian and Turkish embassies and hotels used by U.S. media and by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council. Sunday's attack was the second inside a month on the Rashid.

Saturday, a rocket-propelled grenade downed a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, wounding one soldier. The attack came just hours after Wolfowitz had flown out of Tikrit in a helicopter.

Wolfowitz pressed on with some elements of his schedule but dropped others Sunday before his planned departure.

US soldier killed in Iraq hotel attack

Jordan Times, Monday, October 27, 2003

BAGHDAD (AFP) — A barrage of rockets pounded Baghdad's Rashid Hotel where US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying Sunday, killing a soldier and wounding 17 other people in another setback to American efforts to calm the war-torn country. Another two explosions hit the US-led coalition's main compound in Baghdad, the American military said late Sunday, but gave no further details. Wolfowitz, an arch-hawk in President George W. Bush's administration, escaped unhurt and said the United States would be unrelenting in the pursuit of the “criminals” responsible.

Brigadier General Martin Dempsey told a news conference in the Iraqi capital that one US soldier was killed and 17 other people were wounded in the attack, including seven American civilians and four military personnel.

The injured also included two Iraqi policemen and four non-US citizens, he said.

Another senior military officer said that 29 rockets were fired at the hotel from multiple launching ramps concealed in a trailer disguised as a generator and that 11 others apparently failed to ignite.

Some six to eight hit their target, the 14-storey, 400-room hotel inside the main operations centre of the coalition ruling Iraq, an area sealed off amid heavy security.

“The home-made launcher was driven up in an old trailer. The launcher was camouflaged to look like a generator. They just dropped it off, they were able to get within 400 metres of the hotel,” the officer said.

Three people in a white GMC truck unhitched the trailer in a park behind the hotel. They set off a timing device and left the scene, and the rockets fired off a few minutes later, he said.

A resident by the park said the blue trailer was left five metres from a cement barricade erected in the zone, which was sealed off to the public until Saturday, when the Americans reopened the area in a bid to restore normality.

Half a dozen gaping holes and smashed windows adorned the hotel's western side, between the second and 10th floors. The hallways were filled with smoke and blood stained the floor.

A shaken Wolfowitz described such attacks to reporters as “the desperate acts of a dying regime of criminals” but could not guarantee that the hotel, already targeted once by makeshift rockets a month ago, could be fully protected.

But Dempsey said the rocket attack was not believed to have directly targeted Wolfowitz.

“This device took a couple of months to prepare,” he said.

“Do I think he (Wolfowitz) was targeted? No, I do not,” said the commander of the 1st Armoured Division, which is responsible for Baghdad security.

Following the incident, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington has been surprised by the intensity of the attacks in Iraq.

“We did not expect it would be quite this intense this long,” Powell told NBC television.

He also said he hoped France, Germany and Russia would still give money for Iraq's reconstruction despite their refusal to offer funds at last week's international donors' conference.

Powell insisted that the Madrid conference had been a success, adding that Iraq's oil revenues would make a major contribution to the reconstruction cost from 2005.

The summit brought pledges of about 33 billion dollars, short of the $56 billion that Iraq's Governing Council has estimated it will need.

Also speaking after the Rashid attack, the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, admitted that capturing ousted strongman Saddam Hussein will not end the attacks on coalition forces.

“It will be helpful, it won't end the attacks,” he told Fox television. “It will finally pull the curtain down on the dream some of these dead-enders have that Saddam is coming back.”

“I think he's still in Iraq, he's still alive,” Bremer he said. “We don't have any immediate intelligence as to exactly where he is.”

The Rashid blast came at the end of a last night of six months of curfew in the city, which the coalition said was being lifted in time for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan starting Monday.

It was not immediately clear if the curfew would be reimposed after the hotel incident, which brought to 108 the total number of US soldiers killed since major hostilities were declared over on May 1.

A new poll conducted by the US magazine Newsweek, meanwhile, said less than half of Americans approve of Bush's handling of Iraq, while most want to send fewer troops and less money to rebuild the nation.

Some 58 per cent of the 1,007 adults surveyed said too much money was being spent in Iraq, and 56 per cent said the troop level should be reduced and more soldiers brought home.

Although 59 per cent said Washington was right to take military action, nearly half said the Bush administration does not have a well-thought out plan for establishing stability in Iraq.

Newsweek's Sunday edition also quoted a leading Republican senator as saying that there were parallels between US troubles in Iraq and its doomed campaign in Vietnam.

John McCain, a former presidential candidate, accused the administration of failing to face up to the seriousness of the problems in Iraq and failing to give the public enough information on the situation.

“I'm not saying the situation in Iraq now is as bad as Vietnam. But we have a problem in the Sunni Triangle and we should face up to it and tell the American people about it,” said McCain, who is a Vietnam war veteran.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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