BAGHDAD, Iraq – Insurgents fired rockets from donkey carts at Iraq’s oil ministry and two large hotels here Friday in a symbolic strike on two well-fortified targets just after a top U.S. commander proclaimed progress in the military’s aggressive new counterinsurgency operation.
At least a dozen rockets were fired in the donkey-cart offensive, eight at the oil ministry and four at the Palestine and Sheraton hotels along the Tigris River in central Baghdad. Two people were reported injured in the hotels, one of them critically.
After the two attacks, U.S. military commanders ordered American soldiers and Iraqi police to stop and search all donkey carts, which often ply the streets in the early morning. Soldiers and police found two more rocket-equipped carts, one in front of Baghdad University’s Law School and the other near offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party headed by Jalal Talabani, the current president of Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
In an operation reminiscent of last month’s attack on the al-Rashid Hotel, in which one U.S. soldier was killed, the rockets were launched at the hotels and the ministry from carts that were parked 200 to 300 yards away, beyond the security perimeter. The insurgents tied the donkeys to trees, positioned the launcher, triggered the rockets and fled before they could be apprehended, military officials said.
The carts were outfitted with homemade rocket launchers whose steel tubes contained Soviet-made 107mm Katyusha rockets, which have a range of up to 10 miles. Iraq’s army had thousands of such rockets, many of which are believed to have wound up in the hands of resistance fighters.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military’s top spokesman here, called the attacks “militarily insignificant.”
On Thursday evening, the commander of U.S. troops in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, said that since the launch of a crackdown on insurgents in the capital last week, there had been a 70 percent drop in attacks on U.S. forces.
But U.S. military officers acknowledged they were taken unaware by the donkey carts, one of many deceptive methods resistance fighters have used to conceal weapons. On roads outside Baghdad, they’ve hidden bombs in animal carcasses and piles of trash.
Meanwhile, the United Nations oil-for-food program officially ended Friday, seven years after the unique enterprise began feeding the majority of Iraqis. The U.S.-led coalition will take over the multibillion-dollar operation and continue supplying Iraqis with food until June.
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