- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- At least
two rockets slammed into the Sheraton hotel in central Baghdad on Thursday,
damaging the building and causing a fire nearby, witnesses said.
-
- There were no immediate reports of casualties.
-
- Immediately after the attack, U.S. and Iraqi forces opened
fire in the direction from where the rockets were believed to have been
launched, lighting up the sky with tracer bullets.
-
- A palm tree at the front entrance to the Sheraton was
on fire. A resident of the hotel said one rocket had hit a first-floor
room and a second exploded moments later.
-
- Panicked residents fled from the building, where the
lobby was littered with shattered glass and bits of rubble.
-
- A source at Iraq's Interior Ministry said three Russian-made
Katyusha rockets were employed in the attack. The Iraqi police said the
rockets were fired from the back of a truck parked in a square about 500
meters (yards) from the hotels.
-
- Ambulances were quickly on the scene and Iraqi police
sealed off access to the heavily fortified complex which houses both the
Sheraton and the adjacent Palestine hotel, both of which are home to scores
of foreign contractors and journalists.
-
- While they are heavily protected by U.S. forces and ringed
by high concrete blast walls, both have been repeatedly attacked by insurgents
firing rockets and mortars over the past year.
-
- About 20 minutes after the rockets hit, a third blast
sounded in the area. Iraqi police said it was a car bomb which exploded
on Firdous Square in front of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels. There
were no reported casualties.
-
- They said they had also found a second car loaded with
explosives in the square, where the statue of Saddam Hussein was famously
pulled down toward the end of the war last year.
-
- Dozens of Iraqi police cars sealed off all road leading
to the square and forced journalists and residents back.
-
- The Sheraton and Palestine stand across the Tigris river
from the heavily defended Green Zone, a complex housing the interim Iraqi
government and U.S. and British embassies. Sirens wailed in the Green Zone
shortly after the blasts.
-
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