- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrillas
fired a mortar round that hit the Sheraton Ishtar Hotel in Baghdad Wednesday
where many Westerners were staying, a U.S. soldier said.
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- "A mortar round hit the top of the Sheraton,"
the soldier told Reuters.
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- A Reuters correspondent said earlier he had seen insurgents
fire at the hotel from a car.
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- He said two cars sped away along a dirt road beside the
nearby Tigris river after the attack, as security guards and U.S. troops
opened fire. A U.S. patrol then arrived to investigate.
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- A private security adviser said there was some damage
to the roof of the hotel, but he said no one had been hurt.
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- Guerrillas fired rockets from donkey carts in audacious
attacks on the Sheraton and the adjacent Palestine hotel in central Baghdad
on November 21, wounding two people. They used the same method to hit the
Oil Ministry on the same day.
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- Many foreign contractors and journalists stay at the
heavily fortified hotels, which are surrounded by concrete blast walls
and guarded by U.S. troops in tanks and armored vehicles.
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- Three U.S. soldiers died in a bomb blast north of Baghdad
earlier Wednesday, while a suicide car bomber killed four other people
in northern Iraq in a spate of Christmas Eve attacks.
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- Civilian and military officials of the U.S.-led occupation
forces have warned diehard insurgents would launch spectacular attacks
during the holiday season.
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