A US soldier was killed and 15 people, 11 of them American, were wounded when dozens of rockets were fired at a Baghdad hotel while US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying there during a tour of the war-torn country. "One US soldier was killed. Seven US civilians were wounded, four military were injured, along with four foreign nationals," a military spokesperson told AFP. The hawkish Wolfowitz, a key champion of the US-led invasion of Iraq, emerged unscathed and defiant from the attack, describing it as symptomatic of "the desperate acts of a dying regime of criminals". The target of the attack, the landmark Rashid Hotel, lies immediately opposite one of the main buildings of the US-led occupation administration and has been heavily fortified by US troops with concrete defences blocking all access roads. But the senior US officer acknowledged that the attackers had managed to get within 400 metres (yards) of the hotel with their makeshift rocket launcher. Twenty-nine rockets were fired at the hotel at around 6:00 am (0300 GMT) Sunday, killing one person and wounding 15 others, a top US military officer earlier told AFP. "There were 16 casualties. One of them died," the officer said. The wounded included civilians employed by the US Defense Department, soldiers and foreign nationals, he said. A military spokesman said between six and eight of the rockets, fired from ramps hidden inside a trailer disguised as a generator, actually hit the hotel. The Rashid's windows were shattered and its hallways filled with smoke. Blood stained the floor and at least three bodies were carried out on stretchers. "I saw three people being evacuated on stretchers into military ambulances," said Thomas Hartwell, a photographer hired by the coalition for a documentary project. An Iraqi police colonel said two policemen were among the wounded. The hotel, with 14 floors and 400 rooms, is in an area sealed off with heavy security inside the main centre of operation for the US-led coalition ruling Iraq. The attack occurred after a white GMC truck, with three passengers, pulled up to the Zawra park 400 metres (yards) from the Rashid and dropped off the trailer, the US officer said, citing the military's initial reports. "They just dropped it off, they were able to get within 400 metres of the hotel," the officer said. The assailants set off a timing device and left the trailer, with the rockets firing off no more than three to five minutes later, he said. "There were 40 rockets total, 29 of them were fired and 11 rockets were left in the home-made rocket launcher," the officer said, without saying how many had hit the hotel. "It was a combination of 85- and 68-millimeter rockets," he added. Sixty-eight-millimeter (2.7 inch) caliber rockets are usually fired from helicopters and 85-millimeter (3.3 inch) rockets are normally fired surface-to-air, he said. "It didn't take a lot of precision or training," the officer added. A resident by the park said the blue trailer was placed five meters from a cement barricade erected in the zone, which was sealed off to the public until Saturday, when the Americans reopened the area in a bid to restore normality. The attack, on the eve of the fasting month of Ramadan, came just after the authorities lifted a six-month night curfew in the city, having said it would not be reimposed. Wolfowitz, who was whisked from the hotel, denounced the attack to journalists and as "the desperate acts of a dying regime of criminals" but could not guarantee the Rashid hotel could be fully protected against them. Wolfowitz, a hawk who pushed for the war on Saddam Hussein, expressed his sympathy with the families of those injured and said the United States would be unrelenting in the pursuit of those responsible. The bold assault on the coalition's walled-off headquarters came less than 24 hours after Wolfowitz visited Saddam's stomping grounds of Tikrit, and a Blackhawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade nearby, leaving one soldier wounded. The military refused to say if the helicopter had been shot down, saying only that an RPG had hit the Blackhawk after it landed. But an AFP photographer, embedded with the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, said he saw the helicopter trailing smoke minutes after a loud explosion rocked the area. It quickly lost altitude, crash-landed near the Tigris and was then engulfed in flames, he said. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Rooms of Baghdad's Rashid Hotel show damage after a series of explosions rocked the building early October 26, 2003. (Photo by Chris Helgren/Reuters)