IRAQ Rebels' rockets hit hotels

COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents launched a series of rocket strikes in Baghdad today, hitting two hotel compounds used by Westerners, police and witnesses said.
Also, the Arab state of Yemen said it was willing to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq if the deployment had U.N. backing and was under the control of the world body, foreign ministry officials said.
A day earlier, Jordan's King Abdullah II announced he was willing to send troops to help the new Iraqi government, potentially becoming the first Arab state to do so.
Hostages freed
Kidnappers, meanwhile, fulfilled a promise to free two Turkish hostages after their employer agreed to stop doing business with the U.S. military in Iraq, Turkish authorities said.
And Pakistan's information minister said a Pakistani driver who was taken hostage by insurgents in Iraq has been freed.
Also, a U.S. Marine was killed in action today and a second died of wounds suffered in a separate engagement Thursday, the U.S. command said.
Both engagements occurred in Anbar province, the volatile Sunni Muslim-dominated region of Iraq extending from the outskirts of Baghdad to the borders of Syria and Jordan.
The province includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other insurgent strongholds, but the statement did not specify where the two Marines died. Both were assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
No further details were released.
Firdous Square attack
In one of today's strikes, insurgents used the back of a van parked just off central Baghdad's Firdous Square to fire rockets from a multiple-rocket launcher, a U.S. soldier told The Associated Press. Another soldier said the launcher fell over as a third round was fired, setting the vehicle ablaze.
One rocket from the attack struck the Sheraton Hotel but caused minor damage. A second exploded in the parking lot of the Baghdad Hotel, used by Western security contractors.
Flames and black smoke billowed from the charred van, which burned near a blue domed mosque just off Firdous Square, where U.S. forces hauled down a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, after the city's fall.
The U.S. military said insurgents were aiming for the nearby Green Zone, the heavily guarded area across the Tigris River that houses the U.S. Embassy and offices of Iraq's newly sovereign interim government. The rockets fell short, and one destroyed another vehicle.
Other strikes
In a separate attack in central Baghdad, insurgents fired rockets near the Marjam Hotel, which also is used by Westerners. One rocket struck a statue in nearby Wathik Square and another landed near the Indonesian Embassy without exploding, police said.
In a third strike in Baghdad's Yarmouk neighborhood, a rocket hit the front gate of the fundamentalist Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters, blowing out windows and wounding a guard, the U.S. military said.
About 160,000 foreign troops, mostly American, remain in Iraq to provide security and training.
Insurgents
In Washington, a former Coalition Provisional Authority official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said American officials think the insurgency is being carried out by about 4,000 to 5,000 Saddam loyalists.
Other violent acts are being committed by a couple hundred supporters of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and another group of hundreds of foreign fighters, the official said. In addition to hard-core members of these three groups, there are untold numbers of "supporters or facilitators," said the official, who is deeply familiar with the security situation in Iraq.
American officials think the followers of Saddam, not al-Zarqawi, pose the greatest threat to the new government.
Little information
But there is little Saddam, who was arraigned in court Thursday, has provided in the seven months since his capture to help illuminate the threat.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies learned virtually nothing of value from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during more than six months of interrogations that ended this week with his hand-over to Iraqi legal custody, three senior U.S. officials said Thursday.
The officials, who had access to secret transcripts of Saddam's debriefings, said he provided no clues to the fate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs and no information on whether his regime had contacts with terrorists.
Both were key Bush administration justifications for invading Iraq, but have since been called into serious question.
Saddam provided "very little -- almost nothing," said a former top official of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which dissolved June 28. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he stopped reading the transcripts after a couple of months.
Turks released
The two Turks released today were Soner Sercali, an air conditioning repairman, and his co-worker Murat Kizil. They were reported missing June 1. The kidnappers, who identified themselves as the Mujahadeen Brigade, freed the two men after their employer, Kayteks, pledged to stop working in Iraq.
The Pakistani who was released, Amjad Hafeez, had contacted his family in Pakistan to tell them he was safe in Kuwait, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the AP.
More than 40 people from several countries have been abducted in Iraq since April, many of them released or freed by coalition soldiers.
Killing in Baghdad
Meanwhile, Ansar al-Sunnah, a militant group with purported links to Al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for killing a Finance Ministry official in Baghdad.
Ehsan Karim, head of the ministry's audit board, died Thursday after a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, said Sa'ad al-Amili, an Iraqi Health Ministry official. Karim's guard and driver also were killed in the blast, which wounded four bystanders.
Insurgents repeatedly have targeted Iraqi officials participating in the interim government because they are seen as traitors participating in the U.S.-led occupation.
British trial
In London, the government said a British soldier will stand trial for shooting a 13-year-old Iraqi boy last year in southern Iraq.
Pvt. Alexander Johnston of the King's Own Scottish Borderers will face court-martial in the Sept. 15, 2003, shooting at al-Uzayr, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said. Johnston also could face an alternative charge of negligent handling of a weapon.
The Ministry of Defense would not give details of the shooting or say how badly the boy was wounded. Military sources said the shooting occurred while the soldier was on guard duty. No trial date was set.