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Oil Ministry, two hotels hit by rockets

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA Nov. 21. Iraqi resistance fighters on Friday fired rockets concealed in donkey carts at three targets — two Baghdad hotels mostly housing Westerners and the Oil Ministry building.

Early in the morning, rockets slammed into the 16th and 17th floors of the Palestine Hotel used by mainly by Western journalists and foreign contractors. One rocket hit an unoccupied room, blowing a large hole in the wall.

The nearby Sheraton Hotel on the edge of the Tigris river was also almost simultaneously hit in the well-coordinated attack — a hallmark of the Iraqi resistance. The rockets punched holes in the building, and one hit the main lift shaft. Several people were wounded and two of them had to be taken to hospital, but no deaths were reported. Both the hotels attacked were well-guarded with large U.S. troop deployments and fortified with concrete barriers. Resistance fighters had carried out a similar rocket attack last month on the Rashid Hotel, a symbol of U.S. occupation of Iraq, narrowly missing the visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, who was residing there then.

Eyewitnesses said the Oil Ministry building was ablaze and releasing thick black smoke, after it was hit by three rockets. While most of the Iraqi Ministries straddling the Tigris river were destroyed during the Iraq war, the U.S. military and air force had deliberately spared the impressive, multi-storeyed Oil Ministry building, because of its importance in reviving the coveted Iraqi oil industry. Revenues generated from oil sales were meant to fund part of Iraq's reconstruction.

The resistance fighters used donkey carts for concealing and firing the rockets, and the U.S. military sources reportedly conceded that the unconventional tactic had caused surprise. Television pictures showed a cart turned on its side after the attack. Several rockets were seen lying on the ground.

Meanwhile, resistance fighters continued to target supporters of the U.S. occupation. On Thursday, a suicide car bomber killed at least four people in the northern city of Kirkuk, close to the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). PUK's leader, Jalal Talabani, heads the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Earlier on Wednesday, a car bomb exploded in Ramadi, outside the house of Sheik Amer Ali Suleiman, a leader of one of the largest Sunni tribes in the area and known to be close to the Americans.

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