Rockets hit Iraq hotels

11.00am

BAGHDAD - Rockets struck two Baghdad hotels on Friday, wounding three people and waking the capital's residents who had been riveted a day earlier by televised pictures of Saddam Hussein appearing before an Iraqi judge.

Poland said its troops in Iraq had stopped old artillery shells from Saddam's era containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin falling into the hands of militants by buying the weapons after tip-offs. It gave few details.

A previously unknown militant group claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks on the central Baghdad hotels and said it would go on targeting foreigners until US-led forces quit Iraq, Al Jazeera television said.

Al Jazeera broadcast a video tape showing three masked gunmen said to be from the Kerbala Brigades group, but no independent verification of the claim was immediately available.

A bus and a pick-up truck were used as makeshift launch-pads to fire the rockets at the hotels, housing both foreigners and Iraqi officials.

West of Baghdad, a US Marine was killed in a province that includes the restive town of Falluja. More than 630 US soldiers have been killed in action since the US-led invasion in March last year to topple Saddam.

KILLINGS AND TORTURE

US-led foreign troops and Iraqi security forces have been on alert for any major attacks to disrupt Washington's handover to an interim Iraqi government, which occurred on Monday, and Saddam's court appearance over decades of killings and torture.

About 160,000 mostly US troops have remained in Iraq to help fledgling Iraqi forces to stamp out guerrilla attacks, blamed by Washington and the new Iraqi government on Saddam supporters and foreign Islamic militants.

The government hopes its drive to bring the former Iraqi president to justice over war crimes and crimes against humanity will prompt guerrillas still loyal to him to abandon the fight.

Saddam questioned the Iraqi judge's authority on Thursday, saying the "real criminal" was President Bush.

Photos released on Friday showed Saddam smiling wryly as Iraqi guards removed his chains before he entered the courtroom.

He and 11 aides who were also charged could face the death sentence if the new government reinstates it.

The preliminary charges against Saddam included the 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait, suppression of Iraq's majority Shi'ites, poison gas attacks and other massacres of Kurds, and killings of religious and political figures.

POLAND SAYS MILITANTS SEEKING SHELLS

Poland said the shells found by its troops dated from the 1980s and that it had bought them through individuals who contacted officials in its military zone in south-central Iraq.

"We bought all the shells available ... Terrorists are seeking these missiles on the black market, offering a price of around $5,000 per warhead," General Marek Dukaczewski, head of army intelligence, told a news conference.

He said there was no evidence any shells had ended up in militants' hands.

Poland said its soldiers found 17 Grad rockets and two mortar shells in late June and that US experts had carried out tests on the weapons.

"Tests conducted showed that there was cyclosarin in the rocket heads," said Dukaczewski.

But the US military said only two of the rockets had tested positive for sarin gas, and that another 16 rockets found by the Poles had contained no chemical agents.

The reason for the discrepancy in figures was unclear.

"Our predictions and reports that Saddam Hussein did not come clean with a large sum of weapons, artillery shells and of weapons of mass destruction were proven true," said Polish Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski.

"Some of those warheads were old but it could not be ruled out some could still be used," Szmajdzinski said.

Saddam's government said it produced cyclosarin munitions in the 1980s to fight Iran but was committed to destroying stocks and ceasing production by UN resolutions after the Gulf War.

A Pakistani kidnapped by Islamic militants in Iraq contacted his family in Pakistan to say he had been released. Earlier, two Turkish hostages were freed by guerrillas, apparently after promising to stop working for US forces.

Jordan's King Abdullah told the BBC his country was ready to become the first Arab country to send peacekeepers to Iraq if the new government requested it. Iraqi leaders have previously said they do not want troops from any of Iraq's neighbours.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq