March 7, 2004

BAGHDAD - Insurgents fired at least seven rockets on Sunday night, hitting a hotel used by US occupation officials and wounding one American, the military said. It was the biggest attack on the US coalition headquarters in Baghdad in weeks.

Five rockets hit the Al-Rasheed hotel, where some civilian contractors are living and a coalition dining hall is located. A US civilian contractor was wounded, the military said.

The Al-Rasheed is located across the street from the Baghdad Convention Centre, where many coalition offices are located. The centre was where Iraq's Governing Council intended to sign an interim constitution on Friday, but a last-minute political dispute delayed the ceremony. Council members said they hoped to sign the document on Monday.

A series of explosions echoed across central Baghdad from the strike, sirens blared, and smoke and flames were briefly visible in the Green Zone, the heavily guarded area where the US-led coalition is based.

The rockets were fired around 7.30pm from a white SUV parked outside the Green Zone near the former Foreign Ministry building. The SUV burst into flames during the barrage, and US troops found two unlaunched rockets in a rack on the vehicle.

The troops then blew up the vehicle at midnight, a US military spokesman said.

The Green Zone was last struck on March 3, when a US Army spokesman confirmed that a rocket hit the area. No one was injured and no damage was reported then.

Meanwhile, in northern Iraq, insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a police station in the city of Mosul in a drive-by attack that killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded two police officers, police said.

Earlier on Sunday, some 500 US soldiers, backed by tanks and helicopters, raided Baghdad's biggest dairy processing plant, in the western suburbs of the capital, looking for specific militant suspects. Four people were arrested, battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan said. -- AP

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