The shattered glass front of the elevators shaft of Baghdad 's Sheraton hotel (AFP)

FALLUJAH, Iraq, March 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Three Iraqis were killed by U.S. gunfire early Wednesday, March 24, when U.S. occupation troops stormed the restive town of Fallujah, as the heavily-fortified Sheraton hotel in Baghdad came under a missile attack.

Four other Iraqis, including two children, were killed in two separate incidents in the occupied country.

Three Iraqis were killed in Fallujah after putting up fierce resistance to the U.S. raid, Al-Arabiya news channel reported.

U.S strike helicopters were seen hovering overhead, opening fire randomly at Iraqi houses.

A U.S. military spokesman told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that two soldiers were wounded and a military vehicle was destroyed in the raid, which occurred at around 1:30 a.m. (2230 GMT).

Waddah Ibrahim Al-Himdani, who said he witnessed the incident, told AFP that U.S. soldiers entered Fallujah, 50 kilometers west of Baghdad, after midnight and were targeted with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Gunfire and explosions sounded around the town for several hours, residents said, asserting that several houses were damaged.

Mortar shells were also believed to have been fired at a U.S. position three kilometers (two miles) to the east of the town.

On Tuesday, March 23, an Iraqi child and a foreign security guard were killed in a drive-by-shooting outside Fallujah, a U.S. army spokesman said Wednesday.

“One foreign protective security personnel and one child were killed in a small arms fire attack near to Fallujah at approximately 7:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (1630 GMT to 1700 GMT) on Tuesday (March 23),” the spokesman said.

The spokesman added that no occupation forces were hurt but was unable to give the nationality of the dead foreigner.

Iraqi Family Perished

The bus hit in Mosul (AFP)

In Baghdad, an Iraqi mother, father and their eight-year-old daughter were killed Wednesday when their minibus was hit by a roadside bomb, the head of a local morgue told AFP.

“The device blew up as the bus, which had several other people aboard, was traveling through the southeast suburb of Salmanpak,” said morgue head Fahik Amin Baker.

Also on Wednesday, three Iraqi policemen and a civilian were wounded in separate roadside blasts in the northern city of Mosul while a U.S. military vehicle was damaged.

The civilian, an Iraqi bus driver, was in “serious condition”, doctor Mubarak Ahmad Abdullah of the Mosul Emergency Hospital told AFP.

Witnesses who rushed him to hospital said he was hurt when a bomb planted on the side of a road in western Mosul exploded as a U.S. motorized patrol and the bus passed by.

A jeep in the patrol was damaged, they said.

Earlier in the day, two policemen were wounded in a similar explosion in the center of Mosul, a police officer told AFP.

The attacks came just hours after eight police cadets and two civilians were shot dead in a drive-by shooting on Tuesday in the city of Hilla, 100 kilometers south of Baghdad.

Attack On Sheraton Hotel

In a fresh attack on a Baghdad hotel, a rocked slammed predawn Wednesday into the Sheraton hotel but caused no causalities. 

The rocket hit the sixth floor of the heavily-fortified hotel at just after 4:00 am (0100 GMT), but it shook awake guests and sent a ripple of panic through the area.

“A rocket hit an air-conditioning unit on the sixth floor and knocked down a small portion of a wall,” a journalist told AFP, asking not to be named.

Normally darkened like the neighboring Palestine Hotel at that hour, most lights were on at the Sheraton, which is popular with Western contractors and the media, and lifts could be seen busily shuttling up and down.

AFP said many foreigners working in the capital are checking out of hotels and moving into rented accommodation as the capital's best protected hotels suffer periodic attacks, scaring the largely foreign guests inside.

The fresh attack came just one week after a shuddering blast gutted the Mount Lebanon hotel in central Baghdad, killing at least 17 people.