IRAQ: A rocket slammed into a hotel in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit today, killing 15 people and injuring eight, US and Iraqi officials said.
Dr Hassan al-Juburi, director of the Tikrit Teaching Hospital, said the eight injured included two policemen and all the victims were Iraqis, he said.
Tikrit residents said the hotel housed mostly construction workers who had no connections with the American military.
A major assault by US forces on the rebel-held town of Falluja loomed closer yesterday after Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, warned that his "patience was running thin" with talks to find a peaceful solution.
The interim government has repeatedly demanded that Falluja leaders halt insurgent activity, hand over foreign Islamist militants loyal to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and accept the return of Iraqi security forces.
In Baghdad on Saturday, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the Al Arabiya television network, killing seven people and injuring 19, while eight marines were killed and 10 wounded when a car bomb detonated next to a truck west of Baghdad - the biggest number of American military deaths in a single incident since May.
British soldiers also came under attack. Four shells landed early yesterday in the Black Watch battle group's new base, Camp Dogwood, south of Falluja.
There was also grim news on the hostage front, with the discovery of the decapitated body of the 24-year-old Japanese hostage Mr Shosei Koda, found in Baghdad wrapped in an American flag. He was kidnapped last week by a group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.