BAGHDAD, Iraq – A roadside bomb exploded north of Baghdad Wednesday, killing three U.S. soldiers in the deadliest attack on Americans since deposed leader Saddam Hussein’s capture. Hours later, guerrillas fired a mortar shell that hit an upper floor of a Baghdad hotel filled with Western contractors and journalists.
The strike on the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel injured no one because the 60mm mortar shell hit a barrier, or outer wall, on the heavily barricaded 19-story hotel, which rises from the east bank of the Tigris River, said Capt. Jason Beck of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division.
Beck said Iraqi security guarding the hotel immediately fired at the guerrillas, who fled. Early today, distant explosions were heard in central Baghdad as the U.S. military bombarded suspected rebel positions.
The hotel attack, which rattled windows for blocks, followed a string of separate bombings that killed six civilians and a suicide bomber in addition to the three American soldiers.
Until Wednesday, U.S. military commanders had said the number of daily rebel attacks were slowing in recent weeks – even as they braced for increased violence around the Christmas holiday.
The day’s fighting began before dawn, when the 1st Armored Division unleashed an artillery barrage on three rebel targets in southwest Baghdad, aided by Air Force jet fighters and gunships.
Elsewhere, U.S. troops continued their stepped-up raids on homes in several towns that led to the arrest of a Sunni sheik said to be close to the most wanted man in Iraq. Troops rounded up dozens of guerrilla suspects in strongholds of U.S. resistance, saying they were capitalizing on intelligence from interrogations and documents seized in the Dec. 13 capture of Hussein, the former dictator.
At 9 a.m. Wednesday, three U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that hit a military convoy near Samarra, a town north of Baghdad where insurgents have often launched attacks.
In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car in front of the Kurdish Interior Ministry in the city of Irbil, near Kirkuk, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad.
Four civilians were killed – two guards, a 13-year-old girl and a passing taxi driver – along with the bomber, said Interior Minister Karim Sinjar. He said 101 people were injured in the 11 a.m. explosion, two seriously.
Copyright ©2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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