Rocket Hits Hotel, Killing 15 Iraqis

A rocket slammed into a hotel in the northern city of Tikrit on Sunday night, killing 15 Iraqis and wounding eight, hospital officials said.

Insurgents may have been aiming at a U.S. military base 800 yards away, which was targeted by a second rocket. U.S. officials said no American casualties were reported.

The 7:50 p.m. attack sent guests of the three-story Sunubar Hotel running into the street, some barefoot, others bloodied. The bodies pulled from the rubble were apparently those of Shiite Muslim workers from southern Iraq who came to make a living in the mostly Sunni Muslim region.

In other violence in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, clashes were reported between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi, killing seven Iraqis and injuring 11, hospital officials said.

Today, gunmen killed the deputy governor of Baghdad on his way to work, Iraqi officials said.

Hatim Kamil was assassinated in a drive-by shooting, said Baghdad Gov. Ali Haidri.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said Kamil was killed when gunmen opened fire on his car in the southern Doura neighborhood. Two of his bodyguards were wounded in the attack, Abdul-Rahman said.

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Sunday that authorities had arrested 167 suspected “Islamic militants” in the last few weeks, most of them non-Iraqi Arabs.

He said those detained included four top figures -- a Palestinian, a Lebanese, a Saudi and an Egyptian -- in the network led by Abu Musab Zarqawi. Of the 167 detainees, 11 were Iraqis who had fought in Afghanistan, Allawi said.

Allawi also said 3,000 followers of Saddam Hussein’s former Vice President Izzat Ibrahim had been detained.