Early Friday, U.S. aircraft attacked what U.S. command said was a hideout of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah. The military said ''credible intelligence sources'' reported terrorist leaders were meeting at the hideout.

A Fallujah doctor said the attack killed 10 people, including a groom on his wedding night, and wounded the bride and 16 others. Residents reported several other strong explosions in the insurgent stronghold through the night.

In Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, Adil Khamis said his hospital received 10 dead.

The latest attacks came as an aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr offered to disarm his Mahdi Army militia in a move that could bring an end to weeks of fighting in Baghdad's Shiite district Sadr City. The government cautiously welcomed the offer and suggested other militant groups also lay down their arms.

Three Katyusha rockets slammed into the Sheraton hotel, the Interior Ministry said, triggering thunderous explosions, shattering windows and setting off small fires. Dazed guests, including Western journalists, contractors and a bride and groom on their wedding night stumbled to safety through the smoke and debris.

''I made a mistake by booking at the Sheraton,'' said Hayer Abdul Zahra, holding his shivering bride under his arm. ''I knew something like this would happen.''

There were no deaths or serious injuries, Iraqi officials said.

The hotels, which have been targeted by rockets and mortars before, stand as symbols of continued U.S. and Western dominance in Iraq despite the formal handover of power to an interim Iraqi government June 28.

Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the rockets were fired from the back of a minibus parked near Firdous Square, where jubilant crowds hauled down a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, marking the fall of the capital to American forces.

A fourth rocket blew up inside the vehicle, he said, as security guards responded with ear-shattering volleys of automatic weapons and machine gun fire.

''It was a shattering explosion, a crack and then a massive, massive thud,'' said John Cookson of Fox News, which maintains an office in the Sheraton. ''The whole room shook.''

Earlier, in the capital, a mortar shell exploded in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone across the Tigris River from the hotel compound. There was no report of damage or casualties.

U.S. authorities raised a security alert in the Green Zone after an improvised bomb was found in front of a restaurant there on Tuesday. A U.S. military ordnance detachment safely disarmed the device, U.S. officials said. More scattered explosions reverberated through the heart of the Iraqi capital around midnight, but it wasn't known what caused the blasts or if there were any casualties.