U.S. general: Rocket strikes 'militarily insignificant'
Attacks launched from rocket-laden donkey carts
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A U.S. soldier secures the Palestine Hotel, background, after it was hit by rockets Friday.
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Rockets fired from donkey carts may seem primitive, but it worked for those taking aim in Iraq.
CNN's Jane Arraf on the attacks against Baghdad hotels and the oil ministry.
CNN's Walter Rodgers on the deaths of a U.S. soldier and two civilians in Ramadi.
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SPECIAL REPORT
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Rocket attacks launched from donkey-pulled carts that hit the Iraqi Oil Ministry and two heavily guarded hotels on Friday were "sensational" but "militarily insignificant," a U.S. military commander said.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the strikes reflect the low-tech ingenuity guerrillas employ in fighting the high-tech might of a coalition struggling for solid grass-roots information about the elusive insurgents.
"No matter how high-tech you are, no matter how proficient you are, no matter how professional your soldiers are .... we are still dependent to a great degree on actionable intelligence," said Kimmitt, the coalition's deputy chief of operations.
Speaking to reporters, Kimmitt said intelligence-gathering is "getting better every day" but is not good enough yet.
"Do we have enough actionable intelligence? No. The lack of actionable intelligence, does that allow donkeys to sneak in and fire rockets? Yes."
Calling the insurgents "ingenious," Kimmitt said they are "a very clever enemy who knows that we don't have the best intelligence in the world" and will exploit that weakness.
The rockets were aimed at the Iraqi Oil Ministry and the heavily guarded Palestine Hotel, which houses Western journalists and coalition contractors.
Kimmitt said two to three rockets struck the hotel, where CNN is based. One of the rockets ricocheted off the 16th floor and hit the Sheraton Hotel.
Two people were wounded, one of them a U.S. civilian at the Palestine Hotel who was critically injured. A bellboy at the Sheraton Hotel had minor wounds.
The oil ministry building was hit by seven to 10 rockets, Kimmitt said. There were no known casualties, and the launchers were recovered.
Fifteen rockets were found undetonated nearby.
Later, two more donkey carts loaded with weapons were found at different locations in Baghdad -- one with 21 rockets near a Kurdish party headquarters and another with an attached explosive device near a law school -- and the weapons were defused, a coalition military official said. The carts were disguised to look like farmers' carts, with agricultural products stacked on top.
"They realize they can't attack us and defeat us in a conventional sense. What they are trying to do is break our will. They are trying to capture the headlines. But these attacks -- with the exception of a seriously injured civilian -- have had frankly no tactical value and they're militarily insignificant," Kimmitt said.
Kimmitt pointed out that Friday is the Muslim Sabbath, a day of rest.
"What is the purpose of firing rockets at an empty ministry building on a Friday, which is the equivalent of a European Sunday? They're trying to grab headlines."
An unoccupied room next to CNN cameraman Dave Rust's room in the Palestine Hotel took a pair of direct hits.
"The balcony was obliterated," he said. "The whole room was heavily damaged -- the bed was blown up, the walls were all scarred from debris. There was stuff all over the floor and the furniture was all broken."
Soldiers killed in Iraq attacks
A soldier from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division was killed late Thursday when a vehicle struck a homemade bomb near Al Ghalibiyah, about 9 miles (15 kilometers) west of Baqubah, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.
Another soldier was killed Thursday and two were wounded when a homemade bomb struck their convoy east of the central Iraqi city of Ramadi, U.S.-led coalition officials said.
Ramadi, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Baghdad, also was the scene of a bombing late Wednesday in which at least two people died.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush arrive at the British Foreign Office in London on Friday.
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In Kirkuk, a car bomb detonated Thursday outside the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Kurdish political group. The blast killed five bystanders and wounded more than 10 others, according to PUK official Barham Salih.
Among the dead were a schoolteacher and two schoolchildren, officials said. The PUK and the Kurdish Democratic Party are the two leading Kurdish groups in Iraq. The PUK is headed by Jalal Talabani, who is chairman of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
The strikes came amid a U.S. military campaign against anti-coalition targets. On Wednesday, troops killed 10 people who ambushed a coalition civilian convoy south of Samarra, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey of the 1st Armored Division said that the campaign, called Operation Iron Hammer -- one of several offensives against insurgent targets -- is making progress.
"I'd say that [from] the period prior to Operation Iron Hammer to now, the attacks are down about 70 percent, and we are working as hard as we can now to drive it to zero," Dempsey said.
Since the start of the war, 426 U.S. troops have been killed -- 287 since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1st.
No reliable estimate of Iraqi deaths over the course of the conflict is available. The Associated Press reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths just between March 20 and April 20, but the AP said the figure was based on records of only half of Iraq's hospitals and that the number was thought to be significantly higher.
Other developments
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Bush protesters converge on Trafalgar Square in London on Thursday.
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• President Bush ended his state visit to Britain Friday standing side by side with Prime Minister Tony Blair in the British leader's home town. The president and first lady Laura Bush boarded Air Force One Friday after having lunch with the prime minister and his wife at a local pub. (Full story)
• Two children were killed Thursday in an explosion after a child picked up an explosive device in a school yard in Karbala, Iraq, and took it into a classroom, a coalition spokesman said. The student who brought the device into the classroom was between 10 and 12 years old. An unknown number of children were wounded in what the spokesman termed a "sad accident."
CNN's Jane Arraf, Matthew Chance, John King, Suzanne Malveaux and Melissa Gray contributed to this report.
Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
