Wolfowitz Survives Baghdad Attack

"Deputy defense secretary Wolfowitz escaped all right," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted an occupation official as speaking, on condition of anonymity.

Speaking at an earlier press conference shortly after he survived the attack, Wolfowitz said that one American may have been killed and "several" people were wounded.

"There may be one American dead", Wolfowitz said, adding that there had been "several injured".

Wolfowitz said the United States would be unrelenting in the pursuit of the "criminals" responsible.

He described such attacks as "the desperate acts of a dying regime of criminals."

Al-jazeera satellite channel showed footage of two impacts, one on the side of the building and another on one of the facades where windows appeared shattered.

Two gaping holes were seen in a seventh-floor balcony and windows were completely shattered between the third and ninth floors.

The hotel is in an area sealed off with heavy security inside the main centre of operation of the U.S.-led occupation ruling Iraq.

Although its physical impact was minimal, that attack made headlines because it targeted a heavily fortified center of U.S. activity since the downfall of Baghdad in April.

Earlier, an Iraqi police colonel said rocket-propelled grenades were fired from the public zoo behind the Rashid hotel at 6:15 am (0315 GMT) before the assailants sped away in a pick-up truck.

"The Americans found the launchers in the zoo," said the colonel on condition of anonymity, adding that two policemen guarding the hotel were among the wounded.

Thomas Hartwell, a photographer hired by the occupation authorities for a documentary project, said he saw three wounded being carried from the hotel.

"I saw three people being evacuated on stretchers into military ambulances," said Hartwell, who was sleeping in the hotel when the rockets hit.

On September 27, the Rashid hotel was hit by three homemade mortar bombs or rockets that left no casualties and only minor damage.

The Rashid Hotel, built in 1983 with 14 floors and 400 rooms, used to house most of the foreign press, diplomats and many visiting Western businessmen before U.S.-led forces invaded the country in March.

A mosaic of former U.S. president George Bush, who led the campaign that chased Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in 1991, used to adorn the floor at the entrance, bearing the legend "The Criminal."

But since the overthrow of Saddam in April, the picture is gone and the hotel houses officials of the occupying coalition. It stands next to the Baghdad convention center, where the military press offices are located.