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Rocket attack rattles US
27/10/2003 08:35 - (SA)
Baghdad - A rocket attack on the Baghdad headquarters of the American occupation forces in Iraq, which killed a US colonel and wounded 18 people, probably took two months to plan and prepare.
Brigadier General Martin Dempsey of the 1st Armoured Division said he believed the attack was timed to coincide with the lifting this weekend of an overnight curfew in Baghdad and the reopening of a main city bridge.
Return to normalcy
"Any time we demonstrate a return to normalcy, there are those who will push back at that," said Dempsey, who is responsible for security in Baghdad.
Iraqi police said the attacker or attackers boldly drove a white Chevrolet truck to the edge of the Zawra Park and Zoo, just 400m southwest of the hotel, towing what looked like a portable, two-wheeled generator.
A police commander said that when security guards approached, the assailants drove off, but rockets within the blue trailer apparently had been set to fire by a timer and suddenly ignited, flashing toward the hotel, a clear shot looming just over the treetops.
"When he saw us, he fled," guard Jabbar Tarek said of the driver. The guards weren't armed, Tarek said, or: "I would have fired on him."
Tarek and one other guard were lightly injured by rockets that exploded prematurely, Dempsey said.
"I thought my house was being destroyed, it was such a huge sound," Hamoudi Mutlag, 48, said of the rockets' impact.
Dangerous now
Mutlag, an Al Rasheed maintenance worker, asked whether he now feared staying in his house near the hotel, said: "Every place in Baghdad is dangerous now that the Americans are here," he said.
Dempsey said the attackers welded together a 40-pod launcher that held both 68mm and 85mm artillery rockets. Between eight and 10 struck the hotel, and 11 never left their tubes, he said.
The division commander said the insurgent operation required "some reconnaissance and some rehearsal," and possibly two months' preparation. The device was not sophisticated - "a science project in a garage with a welder and a battery and a handful of wires" - but it was effective, he said.
"There is no guarantee we can protect against this kind of thing unless we have soldiers on every block," one of Dempsey's reconnaissance officers said at the scene.
The general said his troops had to disarm booby-trap explosives attached to the trailer before towing it away.
The well-planned attack was the second on the hotel, which was hit on September 27 by small rockets or rocket-propelled grenades that caused minimal damage and no casualties.
At his news conference, Dempsey noted the number of attacks started surging in September.
"Why haven't the number of attacks gone down? I don't know the answer to that," he said. The US command is "still trying... to figure out exactly why that happened."
- AP
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