Baghdad, Iraq ? Rockets launched from donkey carts. Explosives hidden in the carcasses of roadkill. Land mines taken apart and converted for attacks. Insurgents in Iraq are borrowing tactics used by Palestinians, Afghans and others to press their fight against the U.S.-led occupation.

The U.S. military dismissed the tactics Friday as “militarily insignificant,” though it acknowledged an “inventive, ingenious” adversary exploiting U.S. weaknesses.

In the latest sign of Iraqi ingenuity, guerrillas fired more than a dozen rockets from donkey carts Friday at the Oil Ministry and two hotels used by international journalists and civilian defense contractors.

One civilian contractor was wounded when the rockets exploded at the Palestine Hotel and at the nearby Sheraton. There were no casualties at the Oil Ministry, which was closed for the Muslim day of prayer.

Two more rocket launchers mounted on donkey carts were discovered in the Waziriya neighborhood, which includes several embassies and government offices. One donkey was carrying a propane canister wired with explosives, U.S. officials said.

Donkey carts are common on the streets of Baghdad, Cairo and other Middle Eastern cities and draw little attention. The cart used to fire on the hotels was on a major thoroughfare less than two blocks from a police station and about 200 yards from a U.S. Army guard post.

“They’re trying to break our will. They’re trying to seize the headlines … but they’re militarily insignificant,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations, said of Friday’s attacks.

U.S. Army soldiers examine a rocket launcher mounted on a donkey cart outside the Italian Embassy in Baghdad. More than a dozen rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq's Oil Ministry and two downtown hotels Friday morning.

However, Kimmitt acknowledged the attacks point to “a very clever enemy who knows that we don’t have the best intelligence in the world” and is cleverly exploiting “some vulnerabilities.”

In London, Adam Sieminski, an oil analyst at Deutsche Bank, said the attack on the Oil Ministry appeared designed “to prove that the Americans can’t guard everything and to make life difficult.”

Iraqi insurgents have adopted other time-tested guerrilla techniques, modifying them as necessary.

Soldiers from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which patrols the Baghdad area, tell of a colleague who was about to remove the body of a dog from a roadside when he noticed small wires poking from the carcass. The dog’s body was packed with explosives.

More often such roadside bombs — among the deadliest threats to U.S. soldiers — have been fashioned from innocuous-looking containers packed with explosives removed from artillery shells, land mines and other weapons taken from Iraqi arms depots that have not yet been properly secured. On Friday, the military reported the deaths of two more American soldiers killed by roadside bombs.