Up to 15 people were wounded in the brazen attack that is a setback for the Bush administration, undermining its insistence that the United States is winning the guerrilla war in Iraq. The No. 2 Pentagon official, Paul Wolfowitz survived unharmed after his hotel was blasted on yesterday.

The blast of the rockets hitting the building at about 6 a.m. echoed across the city as a clear, rapid series of explosions. Guests at the Rashid Hotel were thrown from their beds by the impact of the blasts.

Some people were carried out of the hotel on stretchers and others walked away with blood on them after at least six rockets slammed into the building, destroying rooms a few stories below Wolfowitz?s on the 12th floor, witnesses said.

Wolfowitz, a major force behind the United States invading Iraq, was led away by security forces and appeared composed after descending a stairwell past thickening smoke and blood stains, witnesses said.

Iraqi security guards exchanged gunfire with the attackers and wounded two of them, Capt. Charles Steward, spokesman for the 1st Armored Division, said. He did not know if anyone had been detained.

Injuries were generally minor and caused by flying debris and possible smoke inhalation, he said. ?We have unconfirmed reports of 15 wounded,? another military official said.

Wolfowitz was paying his second visit to Iraq in three months and had stressed the need to speed up the formation of a new Iraqi army, police force, border guard and civil defense corps to help with security in the Gulf nation.

Lucky to survive

Members of his travelling party, who had been dressing ahead of a breakfast meeting on electricity, calmly walked down stairs and gathered in the lobby before exiting the building with about 200 people, including journalists and US civilian contractors.

Steve Marney, a journalist with Middle East Broadcasting based in Dubai and in Baghdad to help build a new Iraqi media network, said the two ninth-floor rooms on either side of his were completely destroyed by the attack.

?I was a very lucky person. The rooms on both sides of me were hit,? he said. ?It threw me out of bed. He said the hallway was full of smoke and it was pretty hard to see.?

A Reuters photographer saw five impact holes on the west side of the hotel at roughly the 7th, 9th and 10th floors. He said three of the rockets appear to have gone through the wall of the building, the others went through windows.

There were no signs of fire, but some windows were broken. The whole area was sealed off and US military helicopters flew round the building.

In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official who had been briefed on the attack by officials in Baghdad, said he was not aware of any injuries among anybody in Wolfowitz?s travelling contingent.

?The event of the day?

A senior defense official, who saw the rockets slam into the hotel from his room window, predicted to reporters at the scene there would probably be no more attacks on the party. ?That will have been the event for the day,? he said. A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Sgt. Danny Martin, said six to eight rockets hit the Rashid Hotel on the west side of the building.

Wolfowitz had a full day of meetings planned in Baghdad yesterday, including a patrol of the city with a military unit, and had been scheduled to leave at 10:30 p.m.

There were no indications from US officials that he planned to cut his schedule short. The Rashid Hotel is part of a compound on the west bank of the Tigris river used by the US-led administration.

It is in a fortified complex that includes palaces built by former leader Saddam Hussein and his elite troops. Three rockets fired at the hotel by guerrillas on Sept. 27 hit the building but no one was wounded.

Carol Giacomo