October 27, 2003	Monday	Sha’aban 30, 1424

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BAGHDAD, Oct 26: Guerillas blasted rockets at Baghdad’s most heavily fortified hotel where US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying on Sunday, killing an American soldier and wounding 15 people, US officials said.

Mr Wolfowitz, who escaped unhurt, vowed that the United States would not be cowed into abandoning Iraq.

But the bold attack on the hotel with the tightest security in Baghdad, if not the Middle East, undermined Washington’s claim that it is steadily defeating the guerillas who have killed 109 US soldiers since President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.

The rockets crashed into the Rashid Hotel at about 6am (0800am PST), sending rapid explosions echoing across the city and throwing several guests from their beds.

Some people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers and others walked away spattered with blood after the missiles destroyed rooms on storeys below Wolfowitz’s on the 12th floor, witnesses said.

Mr Wolfowitz, an architect of the US war on terror and an intellectual force behind the US-led invasion of Iraq, was led away by security forces. He appeared composed but looked shaken when he addressed reporters a few hours later.

“These terrorist attacks will not deter us from completing our mission, which is to help the Iraqi people free themselves from the types of criminals who did this and protect the American people from this kind of terrorism,” an unshaven Wolfowitz said in a trembling voice.

Guerillas fired 20 rockets from a home-made launcher disguised as a power generator, US defence officials said. Some of the rockets did not explode and another 11 rockets failed to launch from their canisters, they added.

The rocket launcher was on a blue trailer that was pulled into a side street near a park 700 to 800 metres from the hotel a few minutes before the attack, they said. The rockets were launched using a timer.

Iraqi security guards exchanged gunfire with the attackers and wounded two of them, Captain Charles Steward, spokesman for the 1st Armoured Division, said. He did not know if anyone had been detained.

NOTHING PERSONAL: Mr Wolfowitz, on his second visit to Iraq in three months, had called for the speedier formation of Iraqi security forces.

Members of his travelling party had been dressing ahead of a breakfast meeting. In one of the hotel corridors, survivors waded calf-deep through water from a burst pipe.

One 11th-floor room was destroyed, according to a journalist who saw the devastation. Part of the ceiling collapsed, the door was blown off, a hole was punched in the wall and smoke poured from the room.

Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armoured Division, later told Wolfowitz: “I don’t think this was targeted at you. I don’t want you to take this personally.”

“I don’t,” Wolfowitz replied.

Dempsey said the military had expected an attack in Baghdad to counter the US-led administration’s progress in reopening a major bridge in the capital on Saturday.

“They clearly are trying to tie these things (attacks) to something we have done positive. This enemy won’t wave a white flag,” the general said.

Angry at US occupation, Iraqis expressed regret at what they saw as a failed assassination attempt.

“I wish Wolfowitz had been killed. I wish all Americans here would be killed,” said Ali Hussein, a grocer in central Baghdad. “The Americans are not human beings, they are monsters. They lied to the Iraqi people.”

Wolfowitz refused to change his schedule and planned to depart late on Sunday.

LONG, HARD SLOG: Violence has eroded Bush’s popularity among Americans worried at the rising US death toll. This month Wolfowitz’s boss, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, warned the United States faced a “long, hard slog” in Iraq.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement: “I will be speaking later this afternoon to US Secretary of State Colin Powell about the situation.”

Guerilla attacks have targeted the United Nations, the Jordanian and Turkish embassies and hotels used by US media and by Iraq’s US-appointed Governing Council.

A truck bomb attack in Baghdad in August killed 22 people including the U.N. chief of mission Sergio Vieira de Mello and other officials and injured 150 others.

The attack on the Rashid was the second in a month on the hotel. The Rashid is part of a compound on the west bank of the Tigris river used by the US-led administration and is a symbol of the US occupation to Iraqis.—Reuters