September 26, 2003	Friday	Rajab 28, 1424

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BAQUBAH, Sept 25: Seven Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded on Thursday night when a mortar fell on a crowded square in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

Officials of Baqubah’s general hospital said seven people died in the blast and they treated seven others who were wounded, including a 12-year-old boy. Six other wounded people were taken to another hospital.

The mortar fell on the Al Burtuqala square, an area in the centre of the town filled with shops and cafes.

US troops around Baqubah have come under frequent mortar attack, particularly near the airport, four kilometres from the town that houses an American command post for the region.

HOTEL BOMBED: A bomb at a hotel in central Baghdad housing crews of the US television network NBC killed a maintenance worker on Thursday in what police called the first such attack aimed at foreign journalists here.

An NBC soundman was slightly wounded by the explosive device placed next to a generator on the sidewalk outside the Aike hotel. Witnesses said another person was injured, but officials did not confirm this.

The blast was the third deadly bomb attack in Baghdad this week.

“We are going to continue to see this terrorist activity over the course of the coming weeks and months,” Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, told reporters.

In further unrest on Thursday, eight US soldiers were wounded, three seriously, when their convoy was ambushed with bombs and small-arms fire in the northern city of Mosul.

The soldiers were injured when their patrol was hit on a main road in front of the local telecommunications centre, a US military spokesman said.

Major Trey Cate of the 101st Airborne Division said a military vehicle was destroyed and another damaged in the attack.

The Baghdad bomb killed a Somali maintenance man who worked at the three-storey hotel located on the corner of Al Hindi street, one of the main thoroughfares in central Baghdad, said police official Karim Mariush.

David Moodie, the injured NBC employee, said his first floor room was directly above the generator.

“I was asleep and then there was a flash and a bang and the chest of drawers came crashing down,” said the 44-year-old Canadian, wearing a bloody T-shirt and a bandage over a cut on his right arm.

Iraq has been hit by a series of bomb attacks since US forces deposed Saddam Hussein in April.

On Monday the UN headquarters here was hit by a suicide bomber in an attack that killed an Iraqi security guard and wounded 17 people. On Aug 19, a car bomb killed 24 people at the same building.

On Wednesday a roadside bomb killed one and wounded 21 others in Baghdad.—AFP