Rocket attack hits Baghdad hotel

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Rockets struck a Baghdad hotel housing foreign contractors and journalists late Thursday, drawing return fire and underscoring the precarious security in the heart of the Iraqi capital. Outside Baghdad, roadside bombings killed two more American soldiers.

Early today, U.S. aircraft attacked what the U.S. command said was a hideout of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah. The military said “credible intelligence sources” reported terrorist leaders were meeting there.

A Fallujah doctor said the attack killed 10 people, including a groom on his wedding night, and wounded the bride and 16 others. Residents reported several other strong explosions in the insurgent stronghold through the night.

The latest attacks came as an aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr offered to disarm his Mahdi Army militia in a move that could bring an end to weeks of fighting in Baghdad’s Shiite district Sadr City. The government cautiously welcomed the offer and suggested other militant groups also lay down their arms.

Three Katyusha rockets slammed into the Sheraton hotel, the Interior Ministry said, triggering thunderous explosions, shattering windows and setting off small fires. Dazed guests, including Western journalists, contractors and a bride and groom on their wedding night stumbled to safety through the smoke and debris.

“I made a mistake by booking at the Sheraton,” said Hayer Abdul Zahra, holding his shivering bride under his arm. “I knew something like this would happen.”

There were no deaths or serious injuries, Iraqi officials said.

The hotels, which have been targeted by rockets and mortars before, stand as symbols of continued U.S. and Western dominance in Iraq despite the formal handover of power to an interim Iraqi government June 28.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the rockets were fired from the back of a minibus parked near Firdous Square, where jubilant crowds hauled down a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, marking the fall of the capital to American forces.

A fourth rocket blew up inside the vehicle, he said, as security guards responded with ear-shattering volleys of automatic weapons and machine gun fire.

“It was a shattering explosion, a crack and then a massive, massive thud,” said John Cookson of Fox News, which maintains an office in the Sheraton. “The whole room shook.”

Earlier, in the capital, a mortar shell exploded in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone across the Tigris River from the hotel compound. There was no report of damage or casualties.

U.S. authorities raised a security alert in the Green Zone after an improvised bomb was found in front of a restaurant there on Tuesday. A U.S. military ordnance detachment safely disarmed the device, U.S. officials said.

More scattered explosions reverberated through the heart of the Iraqi capital around midnight, but it wasn’t known what caused the blasts or if there were any casualties.

In Fallujah, Dr. Adil Khamis said his hospital received 10 dead, “including a groom who was killed on his wedding night and 17 wounded, “including the bride.” He said most of the injured were female relatives of the groom who were staying at the house after the wedding celebration.

American and Iraqi authorities are trying to curb the growing insurgency in Baghdad and elsewhere in order for national elections to take place by the end of January. Some U.S. military officials have expressed doubt that balloting can be held in all parts of the country.

In an effort to restore order, the government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has been talking with representatives from insurgency hotspots, including the radical Shiite stronghold Sadr City in the northeast of the capital.

Late Thursday, a spokesman for al-Sadr, the militant Shiite leader, offered to hand over medium and heavy weapons and cooperate with Iraqi security forces if the government will stop pursuing militia members and release the cleric’s followers in detention.

The offer by Ali Smeisem on Al-Arabiya television contained no explicit promise to disband the militia, as demanded by U.S. and Iraqi authorities. However, a senior security official, Qassim Dawoud, cautiously welcomed the offer and urged other armed groups to lay down their arms.

Elsewhere, the U.S. command said one American soldier from the 13th Corps Support Command died and two others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded late Wednesday near Fallujah. A 1st Infantry Division soldier was also killed and an Iraqi interpreter wounded in a bombing near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, the command said.

As part of the new security push, more than 3,000 U.S. and Iraqi forces are trying to clear an insurgent stronghold in towns and villages just south of Baghdad notorious for kidnappings and ambushes.