SHOTLIST
1. Hotel
2. Various of damaged hotel
3. Bloody cloth on ground
4. Damaged hotel
5. Helicopter
6. Damaged hotel
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Voxpop:
I heard explosions I saw a trailer pulled by a car with a container with launchers aimed at the hotel.
8. Military vehicles
9. Military vehicles on road outside hotel
10. Wide of Al Rasheed Hotel
11. Helicopter flying overhead
12. Military vehicles near hotel
13. US soldiers with ordinance
14. Suspect blue trailer being towed away by US military jeep
STORYLINE
Six to eight rockets struck the Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad on Sunday, blasting holes in the front wall and causing
unspecified casualties in a building that is home to many US military and civilian employees.
US deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who appeared shaken as he spoke to reporters after the attack, said he had unconfirmed reports that there may be one American dead.
The US military command spoke of an unknown number of casualties.
The impacts left at least eight holes and shattered windows in at least two dozen rooms on the west side of the hotel.
The most severe damage appeared to be on the fifth and eighth floors of the 18-story hotel.
Window drapes could be seen dangling on the face of the hotel.
US troops sealed off the area, located in a heavy guarded district near coalition headquarters after the attack.
A US army official said a trailer was found in a park near the Al Rasheed containing rockets and which may have been used to fire at the hotel.
US soldiers removed at least two one metre (three-foot)-long rockets from the trailer, located about a half kilometre (500 yards) southwest of the hotel.
The Al Rasheed is located in an area tightly controlled by the US military on the western side of the Tigris River near the headquarters of the coalition and the Convention Centre which houses US information and other offices.
The hotel was attacked on September 27 with small rockets or rocket-propelled grenades, causing only minimal damage.
US officials had warned that Islamic extremists planned to carry out a suicide bombing attack against an unspecified hotel in the city's Karrada district used by Westerners.
But the warning did not identify the purported target and the Al Rasheed is not in that district.
A car bomb on October 12 against the Baghdad Hotel, also used by US officials, killed eight people, including the bomber, but security measures prevented the vehicle from reaching the building before it exploded.
The Al Rasheed attack occurred two hours after coalition authorities ended the nighttime curfew in the Iraqi capital.
Officials cited improved security for abolishing the curfew which had been in effect since the city fell in April.
Wolfowitz, who was believed to have been in the hotel when the blast occurred, arrived in Iraq on Friday for a three-day visit.
The attack on the hotel - a symbol of the US occupation - occurred one day after a US army Black Hawk helicopter
crashed near the northern city of Tikrit.
A spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division confirmed that the helicopter received ground fire from a rocket-propelled grenade while it was still in the air but the pilot maintained control and crash-landed.
One crewmember was injured.
The Black Hawk helicopter came down only hours after Wolfowitz left Tikrit, where he visited a US garrison.
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