Grenades hit hotel, wreck US chopper

BAGHDAD - Anti-American guerrillas yesterday fired a barrage of rockets at the Baghdad hotel where the US Deputy Defence Secretary was staying.

Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon No 2, was unhurt but a military official said 15 people were wounded.

There are no reports of deaths.

At least two wounded people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers, said a journalist at the al-Rashid Hotel, where the attack happened about 6am local time.



Wolfowitz and senior aides were staying on the 12th floor when the rockets slammed into the hotel several floors below.

About 200 people, including his party, journalists and US civilian contractors, gathered in the lobby before leaving the building.

"Based on what we have heard in security briefings it may have been that someone set these things up last night and then detonated them remotely," a senior defence official said.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Sergeant Danny Martin, said six to eight rockets hit the west side of the Rashid Hotel.

Wolfowitz was paying his second visit to Iraq in three months.

He had stressed the need to speed up the formation of a new Iraqi army, police force, border guard and civil defence corps.

It was not clear if the attack would prompt Wolfowitz to cut short his trip.

He was due to leave Iraq for Washington today.

Earlier, Iraqi guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at a US Black Hawk helicopter which came down near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, wounding one American soldier.

As the aircraft blazed on the ground within sight of a major US base, soldiers told a Reuters photographer at the scene that a rocket-propelled grenade hit it in the air.

Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj said he heard a loud bang before the helicopter was downed.

But a US military spokesman claimed the aircraft had landed and was hit on the ground.



Another US military official in Baghdad said the five crew members were rescued by a second helicopter about 3km east of the US military base.

Rocket attacks are a daily fact of life for the US forces on the ground.

However, there has been only one report of hostile fire bringing down aircraft since major combat was declared over on May 1, despite American fears about the availability of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq.

Wolfowitz had left the Tikrit base by helicopter for Kirkuk in the north just hours earlier, after visiting troops engaged in one of the main hotspots of Iraqi resistance to the occupation forces.

- REUTERS


Home-front dissent

About 25,000 protesters rallied yesterday in United States cities against the US-led occupation of Iraq.

They demanded that troops be brought home and labelled President George W. Bush a "liar".

More than 20,000 people marched in Washington as concern increases over the toll on US forces and the cost of the occupation. They were confronted by a smaller group of war supporters.

More than 100 US troops have been killed in combat since May 1, when Bush declared an end to major combat.


Herald Feature: Iraq