October 26, 2003
By THOM SHANKER and RAYMOND BONNER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 26 — A senior American Army officer was killed and at least a dozen other individuals were injured early this morning when rockets slammed into a hotel located inside a heavily fortified compound. At the time of the attack, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was in the hotel; he was not injured.
The rockets were fired from the 14th of July street, a broad avenue that runs on the south side of the hotel. A huge concrete security barrier separates the road from the hotel and the rest of the compound, and most of the road has been closed off.
Shortly before 6 a.m. this morning, a white passenger vehicle moved along the quiet street, pulling a blue generator, stopped at what had been a cloverleaf — before American forces sealed it off for security reasons — unhitched the generator, then pulled away, according to Iraqis who saw it, and American military officials.
The generator's engine had been removed, and secreted inside were 40 rocket launchers, American officials said. The newer ones were French-made and the kind used in helicopters, American officials said. Half were French-made, half were Russian-made, officials said.
Electrical switches were used to fire the rockets, officials said. Twenty-nine fired. Eleven were in their tubes ready to fire.
Twenty rockets hit the hotel, blowing the balconies off two rooms, and the windows out of many more. Green curtains hung down the outside of the hotel.
A New York Times reporter traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz was a few rooms from where one of the rockets hit. Looking across the street, he saw the generator from which the rockets had been fired, and saw one projectile coming at the hotel, trailing sparks.
American officials declined to release the name of the dead, an Army lieutenant colonel, pending notification of the next of kin.
The injured included four American soldiers, and seven American civilians, according to American officials.
The attack on the well-known Rashid, especially during the visit of a high-ranking American dignitary, will only serve to underscore security concerns for the American-led stabilization effort and questions about how best to rout loyalists of the Saddam Hussein government. Stopping attacks like this looks like mission impossible, without stopping every vehicle, on every road, at every hour.
And that is not consistent with the American desire to returning as much normality as possible to Baghdad.
The 14th of July road was fully opened to traffic only on Saturday when the 14th of July Bridge was opened, amid considerable fanfare.