BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two mortar shells targeting a hotel housing foreigners in the capital hit a house instead Friday night, killing a child and wounding three others. A third mortar hit a nearby road, causing no damage. The shells were believed fired by insurgents.
Crowds including panicked parents searching for children gathered at the scene, where police fired Kalashnikovs into the air to push people back.
The twin blasts, which shook much of the center of Baghdad, were aimed at the al-Sadeer Hotel, police said. The house that was hit was empty, witnesses said, and the casualties had been in the street at the time of the attack.
One child, aged 5 or 6, was killed, police said. Three other people were injured.
“Suddenly, we heard a big boom, and I thought the ceiling was going to crash on my head,” said Abbass Jawad Mohammed, who was inside a nearby home.
Witnesses said children had been playing in the street just before the blast. One barefoot woman raced out, frantically looking for her child.
“We lost him, we lost him,” she screamed.
Also on Friday:
* The U.S. military command said Friday that an American soldier was killed in an insurgent attack on his patrol in Baghdad on Thursday. U.S. forces detained two people in the attack. Another soldier died Thursday in a “nonbattle related incident,” the military said Friday. The cause of death was under investigation.
* Bulgaria and the Philippines stood fast in the face of Islamic insurgents’ threats to kill their citizens taken hostage in Iraq, refusing demands to pull out troops or to pressure the United States to release Iraqi detainees.
* In sermons Friday, Shiite and Sunni clerics criticized new laws giving interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi the right to declare limited martial law, impose curfews and freeze suspected insurgents’ assets.
* A Marine whose mysterious disappearance in Iraq was followed by claims he had been kidnapped and beheaded is exhausted but in “excellent” physical condition, and has yet to tell his story, doctors at a U.S. military hospital in Germany said Friday.
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