Anti-American guerrillas blasted the Baghdad hotel where US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying with a barrage of rockets on Sunday, but the No. 2 Pentagon official survived unharmed, US officials said.

A defiant Wolfowitz vowed that the United States would not be cowed into abandoning Iraq after the brazen attack that he said may have killed one American.

Up to 15 people were wounded in the strike that is a setback for the Bush administration, undermining its insistence that the United States is winning the guerrilla war in Iraq.

The blast of the rockets hitting the Rashid Hotel at about 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) echoed across the city as a clear, rapid series of explosions. Several guests were thrown from their beds by the impact.

Some people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers and others walked away with blood on them after at least six rockets slammed into the building, destroying rooms a few stories below Wolfowitz's on the 12th floor, witnesses said.

Wolfowitz, a major force behind the United States invading Iraq, was led away by security forces and appeared composed after descending a stairwell past thickening smoke and blood stains, witnesses said.

"These terrorist attacks will not deter us from completing our mission, which is to help the Iraqi people free themselves from the types of criminals who did this and protect the American people from this kind of terrorism," Wolfowitz told reporters hours after the attack.

US officials had previously said there were no reports of deaths. But an unshaven and tired-looking Wolfowitz, wearing a blazer and open-necked tie, said he had an unconfirmed report an American had been killed.

Iraqi security guards exchanged gunfire with the attackers and wounded two of them, Capt. Charles Steward, spokesman for the 1st Armored Division, said. He did not know if anyone had been detained.

Injuries were generally minor and caused by flying debris and possible smoke inhalation, he said.

"We have unconfirmed reports of 15 wounded," another military official said.

Wolfowitz was paying his second visit to Iraq in three months and had stressed the need to speed up the formation of a new Iraqi army, police force, border guard and civil defense corps to help with security in the Gulf nation.

Members of his traveling party, who had been dressing ahead of a breakfast meeting on electricity, calmly walked down stairs and gathered in the lobby before exiting the building with about 200 people, including journalists and US civilian contractors. 

Lucky to survive

A US military spokesman, Sgt. Danny Martin, said six to eight rockets hit the Rashid Hotel on the west side of the building.

Steve Marney, a journalist with Middle East Broadcasting based in Dubai and in Baghdad to help build a new Iraqi media network, said the two ninth-floor rooms on either side of his were completely destroyed by the attack.

"I was a very lucky person. The rooms on both sides of me were hit," he said. "It threw me out of bed." He said the hallway was full of smoke and "it was pretty hard to see."   

A witness saw five impact holes on the west side of the brown hotel at roughly the 7th, 9th and 10th floors. He said three of the rockets appeared to have gone through the wall, the others through windows.

There were no signs of fire, but some windows were broken.

The whole area was sealed off and US military helicopters flew round the building.

A senior defense official, who saw the rockets slam into the hotel from his room window, predicted to reporters at the scene there would probably be no more attacks on the party.

"That will have been the event for the day," he said.

On Saturday, Iraqi guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at a US Black Hawk helicopter which came down near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, wounding one American soldier. Wolfowitz had left the Tikrit base by helicopter for Kirkuk in the north just hours earlier.

Wolfowitz said that he was not changing his scheduled events following the attack. He faces a full day of meetings in Baghdad and a patrol of the city with a military unit, and had planned to depart late on Sunday for Washington.

The Rashid Hotel is part of a compound on the west bank of the Tigris river used by the US-led administration.

It is in a fortified complex that includes palaces built by former leader Saddam Hussein and his elite troops.

Three rockets fired at the hotel by guerrillas on Sept. 27 hit the building but no one was wounded.

(China Daily October 26, 2003)