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| Iraq |
| Iraq Hotel Struck Twice by Rebel Rockets |
| 2003-12-25 |
| EFL and re-organized to deal with the Guardian’s schizophrenic reporting style. A roadside bomb exploded north of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing three U.S. soldiers in the deadliest attack on Americans since Saddam Hussein’s capture. At 9 a.m. Wednesday, three U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that hit a military convoy near Samarra, a town north of Baghdad where insurgents have often launched attacks. Damn. Christmas morning, a rebel rocket shattered windows on a Baghdad hotel filled with Western contractors and journalists. The attack on the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel around dawn Thursday came just hours after insurgents struck the same hotel with a mortar shell. There were no reports of injury in either attack. At the same time Thursday, another explosion and gunfire resounded in the city, setting off sirens that wailed for several minutes. U.S. soldiers trained their guns on the street outside the hotel. But military officials said they had no immediate details on the violence. ``We just heard a loud boom and everybody woke up,’’ said a hotel desk clerk, who wasn’t further identified. The hotel attacks followed a string of separate bombings that killed six civilians and a suicide bomber in addition to the three American soldiers. In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car in front of the Kurdish Interior Ministry in the city of Irbil, near Kirkuk, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad. Four civilians were killed - two guards, a 13-year-old girl and a passing taxi driver - along with the bomber, said Interior Minister Karim Sinjar. He said 101 people were injured in the 11 a.m. explosion, two seriously. Kimmitt said the blast brought down the protective wall in front of the building. Irbil houses the Kurdish parliament. Protective walls work. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 We never hear of mortar and rocket attacks on the Baghdad Motel 6. That sounds like it would be a good place to stay, but press people would be hampered. Most of those places don't have a suitable hotel bar for newsgathering. |
| Posted by: Glenn (not Reynolds) 2003-12-25 12:29:23 AM |