Today Saturday Sunday
High: 64 High: 61 High: 66
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IN BRIEF
Blast at Egyptian hotel
leads to 30 fatalities
CAIRO, Egypt — Three explosions
shook popular resorts on Egypt’s
Sinai Peninsula, where Israelis were
vacationing Thursday night at the
close of a Jewish holiday, Egyptian
officials and witnesses said.
The first blast, about 10 p.m.,
shook the Hilton hotel in the Taba re
sort, only yards from the Israeli bor
der. Ehud Yaari, a reporter for Israel’s
Channel One TV, quoting Egyptian
officials, said 30 people were killed.
Israeli medics said they had trans
ferred 22 wounded people to hospi
tals, but there were believed to be
many more. Witnesses said there
were people trapped under the ruins
of the western side of the hotel.
Bush defends invasion
despite critical report
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Faced with a
harshly critical new report, President
Bush conceded Thursday that Iraq did
not have the stockpiles of banned
weapons he had warned of before the in
vasion last year, but insisted that “we
were right to take action” against
Saddam Hussein. “America is safer today
with Saddam Hussein in prison,” Bush
said in a surprise statement to reporters
as he prepared to fly to Wisconsin.
240 detainees released
from U.S., Iraqi custody
BAGHDAD, Iraq — About 240 de
tainees were freed Thursday from U.S.
and Iraqi custody, another sign of what
Iraqi human rights lawyers say is a
marked improvement in the handling of
prisoners in the past two months. None
of those freed was a so-called high-val
ue detainee, said Lt. Col. Barry John
son, a military spokesman. High-value
detainees are processed separately from
the 1,700 “security detainees” at Abu
Ghraib prison near Baghdad and Camp
Bucca in southern Iraq, he said.
The U.S. military aims to transfer
most of the security detainees now
held at Abu Ghraib to Camp Bucca,
which is being expanded and upgrad
ed to become the primary holding fa
cility by the beginning of the year.
U.S. warns of terrorism
threat to schools
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Educa
tion Department has advised school
leaders nationwide to watch for people
spying on their buildings or buses to
help detect any possibility of terrorism
like the deadly school siege in Russia.
The warning follows an analysis by the
FBI and the Homeland Security De
partment of the siege that killed nearly
340 people, many of them students, in
the city of Beslan last month.
— The Associated Press
019776
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Insurgent rockets rattle
hotel housing journalists
quests escape me Baghdad blasts, but security is still
a major concern as bombings and attacks continue
BY ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Rockets struck
a Baghdad hotel housing foreign con
tractors and journalists late Thursday,
drawing return fire and underscoring
the precarious security in the
heart of the Iraqi capital.
Outside Baghdad, roadside bombings
killed two more American soldiers.
More scattered explosions rever
berated through the heart of the
Iraqi capital around midnight, but it
wasn’t known what caused the
blasts or if there were any casualties.
The rocket attacks came as an
aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr offered to disarm his Mahdi
Army militia in a move that could
bring an end to weeks of fighting in
Baghdad’s Shiite district Sadr City.
The government cautiously
welcomed the offer and suggested
other militant groups also lay down
their arms.
Three Katyusha rockets slammed
into the Sheraton hotel, the Interior
Ministry said, triggering thunderous
explosions, shattering windows and
setting off small fires. Dazed guests,
including Western journalists, con
tractors and a bride and groom on
their wedding night stumbled to safe
ty through the smoke and debris.
There were no deaths or serious
injuries, Iraqi officials said.
The hotels, which have been tar
geted by rockets and mortars before,
stand as symbols of continued U.S.
and Western dominance in Iraq de
spite the formal handover of power to
an interim Iraqi government June 28.
Interior Ministry spokesman Col.
Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the rock
ets were fired from the back of a
minibus parked near Firdous Square,
where jubilant crowds hauled down
a statue of Saddam Hussein on April
9, 2003, marking the fall of the capi
tal to American forces.
A fourth rocket blew up inside the
vehicle, he said, as security guards
responded with ear-shattering vol
leys of automatic weapons and ma
chine gun fire.
“It was a shattering explosion, a
crack and then a massive, massive
thud,” said John Cookson of Fox
News, which maintains an office
in the Sheraton. “The whole
room shook.”
Late Thursday, residents reported
strong explosions northwest of the
Sunni insurgent stronghold Fallujah.
Earlier, in the capital, a mortar
shell exploded in the U.S.-controlled
Green Zone across the Tigris River
from the hotel compound. There was
no report of damage or casualties.
U.S. authorities raised a security
alert in the Green Zone after an im
provised bomb was found in front of
a restaurant there on Tliesday. A
U.S. military ordnance detachment
safely disarmed the device, U.S. offi
cials said.
American and Iraqi authorities
are trying to curb the growing insur
gency in Baghdad and elsewhere in
order for national elections to take
place by the end of January. Some
U.S. military officials have ex
pressed doubt that balloting can be
held in all parts of the country.
In an effort to restore order, the
government of Prime Minister Ayad
Allawi has been talking with repre
sentatives from insurgency hotspots,
including the radical Shiite strong
hold Sadr City in the northeast of
the capital.
Associated Press reporters Omar
Sinan and Hamza Hendawi
contributed to this report
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