One person was seriously wounded when four rockets slammed into Baghdad's main media hotel early Friday. Iraqi sources said one rocket hit the Palestine Hotel and another hit the next-door Sheraton.
The casualty was an employee of a subsidiary of giant US contractor Halliburton, said Mohammed Ballout, an employee of a German television station.
The 8th, 12th, 15th and 16th floors of the building were hit, he said.
Meanwhile, smoke could be seen pouring out of the Iraqi oil ministry early Friday after rockets slammed into the building at around the same time as a similar attack on the main Baghdad media hotel, according to AFP.
All in all, eight rockets hit the oil ministry, although only two of them detonated.
A rocket launcher attached to a timer was concealed in a trailer on the other side of the bridge across the Tigris River which runs through the center of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, US forces have detained Arshad Yassin, a brother-in-law of ousted leader Saddam Hussein who was also his personal helicopter pilot and a senior figure in his close protection force until the early 1990s, a senior Iraqi police officer said Thursday.
Yassin, who held the rank of airforce lieutenant general, and another officer of the protection force of the former president, Major Radman Ali Al-Huraimus were arrested Wednesday, in a village located 40 kilometers south of Kirkuk, the officer said.
He said a US force was airlifted to the village and stormed the house where the two were hiding, disguised as peasants.
He added US troops acted on a tip-off because they went straight to the house. The US army, for its part, did not confirm the arrests.
Yassin is married to Samira Hussein, one of Saddam's two sisters. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
