BAGHDAD, 26 December 2003 — Rockets and mortars rained on Baghdad on Christmas Day, hitting hotels, embassies and the vicinity of the US-led administration in Iraq. The bombings, the widest in scale in the Iraqi capital since the Dec. 13 capture of Saddam Hussein, followed warnings of a wave of spectacular attacks during the holiday season.
At least three mortar bombs hit the vicinity of the US-led administration headquarters in central Baghdad shortly before midnight yesterday, witnesses said.
There was no immediate word on casualties or damage in the Coalition Provisional Authority complex. Warning sirens sounded in the huge facility shortly after the attack.
The night attack came 17 hours after guerrillas fired more than a dozen rockets and mortar bombs in central Baghdad, hitting the vicinity of the CPA, two hotels occupied by Westerners, two embassies and an apartment bloc.
The US military said an American soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb in the capital on Wednesday, raising the death toll to four in attacks that day.
The insurgents had also struck the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel — popular with Western contractors and foreign journalists — with a mortar shell late Wednesday but caused no injuries. The same hotel, a 19-story building on the bank of the Tigris River, came under attack yesterday, when a grenade crashed through the atrium. Gunfire erupted immediately after the explosion. Witnesses said a security guard fired at men in a pickup truck who had fired at the hotel, but they fled.
After that attack, US soldiers investigating the area found leaflets warning Iraqis to stay home, Army Lt. Kurt Muniz said. The leaflets warned US forces to leave the country and Iraqi police to stop working with foreigners.
Guerrilla-fired rockets hit the outside wall of the Iranian Embassy, the Turkish Embassy and a residential building next to the German Embassy. The rockets blew a hole in the front wall of the Turkish mission and shattered windows but caused little damage in the other blasts.
A rocket missed the Interior Ministry and landed in a nearby street. Only one woman was wounded in the attacks that took place around sunrise.
Distant explosions were also heard early yesterday as the US military bombarded suspected rebel positions. US soldiers have arrested hundreds of suspected guerrillas and their backers in raids across the Sunni Muslim heartland west and north of Baghdad since Saddam was captured in Al-Dawr.
Later in the day, blasts were heard in central Baghdad and there was sporadic gunfire. A US military spokeswoman confirmed “several rocket and mortar attacks” across central Baghdad overnight and around 6 a.m. They included “three or four impacts” inside the green zone, a barricaded neighborhood in west Baghdad that contains the Republican Palace and other buildings occupied by the US-led administration.
Attackers also struck Baghdad’s Rasheed and Rafidain banks, blowing holes in the buildings. No money was stolen, police said. One rocket hit the Baghdad City Council building, shattering windows. Another unexploded rocket lodged in a nearby street, according to security forces who sealed off the road with a US tank.
In the mostly Shiite Shaab neighborhood in north Baghdad, insurgents fired projectiles at two US military aircraft that were hovering above, said witnesses waiting in a petrol line.
The slain American soldier brought to 206 the number of US military deaths from hostile fire since Washington announced the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1.
