BAGHDAD Iraqi rebels launch attack at coalition headquarters

Three suicide bombers killed themselves and one soldier and wounded 14.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi rebels fired a salvo of mortar shells at coalition headquarters early today in the first attack against the U.S. seat of power since the Americans mounted a massive counteroffensive against insurgents last month.
Nobody was injured, and only light damage was reported to a building in the so-called Green Zone, the downtown area housing the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition, a military spokesman said.
The mortar barrage was the first attack at the headquarters compound since U.S. forces mounted "Operation Iron Hammer" in Baghdad last month to prevent strikes against the coalition's military and civilian targets.
"I heard what appeared to be incoming mortar rounds," Charles Krohn, a U.S. defense spokesman, said by telephone from his room inside the Green Zone. "I was shaken, and I heard a couple of thumps. I felt the vibrations."
The zone includes the Al Rasheed Hotel, which was rocketed Oct. 26 in an attack that killed a U.S. colonel and wounded 18 other people. Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying in the hotel at the time but escaped injury.
Suicide bombers
Today's shelling came just hours after three suicide bombers in a furniture truck blew themselves up at the gates of a U.S. Army base in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding 14 others. It was the third suicide attack on American troops in Iraq this week.
The region around Ramadi and the nearby city of Fallujah is one of the most dangerous for coalition troops and sits in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where the majority of U.S. deaths in hostile action have occurred since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1.
Also Thursday, the military reported one U.S. soldier drowned and another was missing after a patrol boat accident on the Tigris River in Baghdad.
"The soldiers were conducting routine patrols on the Tigris River when one of the soldiers fell overboard, and the other soldier jumped in to save him," the U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
Ghazi al-Talabani, director of the Northern Field Protection Force, which guards oil pipelines in northern Iraq, said an explosion set a pipeline ablaze, forcing officials to halt the flow.
An official of the U.S.-led coalition, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a pipeline was sabotaged late Tuesday or early Wednesday. It was unclear whether the official referred to the same incident.
'Mishandled' contracts
Meanwhile, Defense Department auditors have discovered that a Halliburton Inc. subsidiary may have overcharged the government $61 million on a contract to supply fuel for Iraq, a Pentagon official said at a hurriedly called news conference Thursday night.
In another contract to operate U.S. military mess halls, Halliburton, which was headed by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, would have been overpaid $67 million if auditors hadn't questioned the arrangement, officials said, citing findings of a draft audit.
While Halliburton isn't being accused of wrongdoing and the government isn't yet seeking reimbursement, this is the first instance the Pentagon has said it believes that major contracts for the war in Iraq and its reconstruction have been mishandled.
"We have found some issues of concern that are worthy of immediate attention, and we're making sure that that kind of aggressive action is taken so that we resolve these issues as expediently as possible," said William Reed, director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency.
On the gas contract, Halliburton subsidiary KBR has been charging the U.S. government $2.27 a gallon to deliver gasoline from Kuwait, while another similar contract for gas from Turkey is charging only $1.18, the official said.
Halliburton didn't profit from that differential, officials said.
"This isn't money that went to the company," noted Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's top spokesman.
Rather, he said, the money the Pentagon believes was overcharged went to a private Kuwaiti company that is a subcontractor on the contract. He declined to identify that company. He also noted that during last spring's war, the Kuwaiti government provided fuel to the United States and its allies at no charge.
Embassy site
In other developments, U.S. officials in Washington and Iraq said Saddam Hussein's grandiose presidential palace in Baghdad -- the physical seat and biggest symbol of Saddam's 23-year dictatorship -- is the likely site for the next U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
A State Department official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the palace is among several locations under consideration for the embassy, where the U.S. government's official representative will be based after power is handed over to an Iraqi government by July 1.
Critics say the move will show the world that the U.S. intends to remain the true power in Iraq.
Currently the building, sealed inside a U.S.-occupied neighborhood that sprawls alongside the Tigris River in central Baghdad, holds the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led entity that oversees Iraq.