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Military had intelligence of hotel attack { October 27 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/international/middleeast/27IRAQ.htmlOne official said that the military had specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the hotel, the Rashid, where senior personnel of the American occupation live and eat, but that no special precautions had been taken.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/international/middleeast/27IRAQ.html
October 27, 2003
INSURGENCY
Series of Blasts Across Baghdad Kill at Least 15
By DEXTER FILKINS and RAYMOND BONNER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Monday, Oct. 27 — A series of blasts shook Baghdad early Monday, including a suicide attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. An American investigator said he had counted at least 15 dead there.
An Iraqi police major said the attacker was driving an ambulance and crashed through the security gate. The bomb exploded about 50 feet from the building. Most of the dead appeared to be Iraqis, although at least one Red Cross worker died. Most of the Red Cross staff had not yet arrived for work when the blast went off around 8:30 a.m.
It was the second day of attacks in the capital. On Sunday, an American colonel was killed and at least 16 people were wounded when a barrage of air-to-ground missiles from a homemade launching pad slammed into a highly protected hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was staying.
The explosion at the Red Cross building left a crater six feet deep and heavily damaged other buildings on both sides of the street. It shattered windows in buildings a mile away.
Two other blasts struck police stations, one in southwest Baghdad that killed two people and a suicide bomber and the other in the northern part of the city.
The Red Cross had reduced its staff in Iraq after the devastating bombing of the United Nations headquarters here in August. The staff that remained had moved their offices to the middle of their four-story concrete building in the center of the city.
Iraqi witnesses said they saw an Iraqi ambulance and a small civilian car speeding down a narrow alleyway leading to the building's parking lot about 8:30 a.m. ''The cars were racing and then the ambulance sped up and drove inside the gate,'' said Rawzi Jamar, who runs a cigarette stand about 1,000 yards from the building.
The charred remains of several cars could be seen in the water-soacked parking lot.
American military officials said they did not believe Mr. Wolfowitz was the target of the Sunday attack, but they called the attack carefully planned.
One official said that the military had specific intelligence of an imminent attack on the hotel, the Rashid, where senior personnel of the American occupation live and eat, but that no special precautions had been taken.
Mr. Wolfowitz, who arrived here on Friday for brief visit, was one floor above where one of the rockets hit, officials said; he was not hurt.
Officials said the wounded included five American soldiers, seven American civilians working in various Iraqi ministries as part of the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq, and four non-American civilians. The identity of the dead colonel was not immediately released.
The attack, which officials suggested was probably carried out by men loyal to Saddam Hussein, blasted balconies off two rooms and shattered windows elsewhere in the hotel. American military officials said the attack might have been planned as many as two months in advance and involved some surveillance and rehearsal.
For that reason, they said, it was unlikely that Mr. Wolfowitz was a target. His visit was not announced in advance.
Nonetheless, a senior military official said, ''We knew this was coming.'' The official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, declined to give details, but said several precautionary security measures could have been taken, including moving Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation out of the hotel, increasing the security alert and increasing patrols around the hotel. None of those things happened, he said.
The missiles were launched from an improvised multirocket platform, a homemade version of the Katyusha system used by Russia, military officials said. The Irish Republican Army has used similar systems.
The launcher was hidden in a blue trailer made to resemble a mobile electricity generator, a ubiquitous item in Baghdad, where electrical service is unreliable. In the quiet of early Sunday morning, a white passenger vehicle towed the trailer down a major street that runs between the hotel and a large park. It was then unhitched at a cloverleaf that had been closed by the Americans for security reasons. The car pulled away. Soon after, at 6:08 a.m., 8 to 10 missiles thudded into the hotel, about 450 yards away, officials said.
The casualties could have been higher; 11 missiles failed to fire because of electrical or mechanical malfunctions. In addition, the wheel base of the trailer had been booby-trapped with explosives, which American soldiers deactivated.
Altogether, the launcher held 40 missile pods, said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, whose responsibility is the security of Baghdad. General Dempsey spoke Sunday evening at a news conference held in a building in a compound near the Rashid Hotel.
Half the missiles were 68-millimeter, which have a range of two to three miles; the other half were 85-millimeter, with a three- to four-mile range, he said. The smaller ones were French-made, and designed for use by helicopters. The others were Russian. The French rockets, officers said, were quite new, and were probably purchased after the arms embargo was in place. ''They were in pristine condition,'' said one military officer who inspected the rocket tubes and assembly.
Mr. Hussein had weapons of that type, but General Dempsey said he did not know if the missiles used the hotel attack came from Mr. Hussein's arsenal.
General Dempsey described the device as ''clever, but not sophisticated.'' He called it ''a science project in a garage with a welder and a battery and a handful of wires.''
That such an unsophisticated device could be used against one of the most fortified and well-guarded sites in Baghdad raised questions about the military's ability to secure any major site in Baghdad. The compound is surrounded by high concrete walls, but the missiles were fired over them.
Asked how anyone in Baghdad could feel safe given the attack, the latest in a steady string, General Dempsey said, ''Those working the hardest for the Iraqi people are less safe.'' For those who work with the coalition, trying to rebuild Iraq, he said, ''you will be targeted.''
He said he was convinced that the attack was linked to the opening of the 14th of July Bridge on Saturday -- the trailer was parked on the road leading to the bridge -- and to the lifting of the city's curfew, which was suspended by the authorities for Ramadan. ''Every move to return Baghdad to some level of normalcy was met by terrorist actions by those who don't want the coalition to succeed,'' General Dempsey said.
A New York Times reporter traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz was a few rooms from where one of the rockets hit. Looking across the street, he saw the trailer from which the rockets had been fired, and saw one projectile coming at the hotel, trailing sparks.
The rocket that killed the American colonel slammed into the 11th floor, where correspondents traveling with the Wolfowitz delegation were staying. A broken pipe spilled water ankle deep into the corridor, as the hallway filled with smoke and occupants called for medical help.
On a lower floor, one projectile punched a fist-sized hole in the window, wrecking the walls, shattering furniture and wounding at least one of the two occupants.
Guests were evacuated down an emergency inner stairwell, stepping over trails of blood left by the wounded.
After a decline in attacks on the occupation forces in July and August, strikes have increased substantially in the last two months.
Nevertheless, General Dempsey said he was ''absolutely'' convinced that the security situation here had improved.
No one claimed responsibility for the Rashid attack, but General Dempsey suggested it was probably people who would like to see a return to power of Mr. Hussein, or at least of the Baath Party.
''We have a very good idea of who's attacking us in Baghdad,'' he said. He said that information came from men who had been captured in the process of preparing attacks and from Iraqi citizens.
He did not provide details, but he largely ruled out foreign terrorists.
''We have not seen any infusion of foreign fighters in Baghdad,'' he said.
His assertion was somewhat at odds with what the chief civilian administrator in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, said on Sunday. Appearing on the CBS News program ''Face the Nation,'' Mr. Bremer said there continued to be infiltration of Syrians, Sudanese and Yeminis into Iraq through Syria.
At a hastily arranged midmorning news briefing, a defiant Mr. Wolfowitz declared that the attack would not deter the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq. He called the American civilians and military personnel working in Baghdad heroes struggling to halt those he described as ''criminals who are trying to destabilize this country'' and who ''have abused and tortured Iraq for 35 years.''
Susan Sachs, Thom Shanker and Alex Berenson also contributed to this article from Baghdad.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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