Baghdad, Iraq ? Attackers fired two rocket-propelled grenades Friday night at the Dutch Embassy in Iraq, hitting the roof with one and setting it on fire. The blaze was quickly extinguished, and there were no injuries.

A senior U.S. officer said coalition forces were prepared to deal with any surge in violence during a coming Muslim holiday. The start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan last year was accompanied by a sharp escalation in insurgent attacks.

One grenade exploded on the roof of the Dutch Embassy after nightfall, triggering a small fire. Security guards said a second grenade missed the building.

Hours after the embassy attack, the sound of strong explosions reverberated through the Iraqi capital. A U.S. military spokesman said he had no information on the cause of the blasts, which could be heard in the center of the city.

The Netherlands maintains about 1,100 troops in southern Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition. The Dutch withdrew most of their diplomats in October because of deteriorating security and maintain a staff of five Dutch nationals in Baghdad, none of whom was in the building when it was attacked, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.

Coalition officials are bracing for trouble during the four-day Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, which begins Sunday. The feast commemorates the Quranic account of God allowing the patriarch Abraham to sacrifice a sheep instead of his son Ismail. The Old Testament account says another son, Isaac, was spared.

In October, insurgents marked the beginning of the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan, with a series of bloody strikes, including a rocket barrage on the Rasheed Hotel, vehicle bombings against the international Red Cross and the Nov. 12 suicide attack in Nasiriyah that killed 26 people, most of them Italian paramilitary police.

“We have done some intelligence-gathering for the near term during the Eid period, and we are fully prepared to deal with any insurgency,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations for the coalition, said Friday. He did not elaborate.

In a briefing for reporters, Kimmitt also said that during the past week, there were an average of 18 engagements each day between coalition and insurgent forces — roughly the same as in recent weeks but down from a spike of about 50 daily clashes in November.

So far this month, 34 U.S. soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, down from the 68 combat fatalities in November but more than the 25 battle deaths suffered in December.

Despite the violence, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday a U.N. team might leave for Iraq in a few days to assess the possibility of having early legislative elections. Annan said this week he would send the team if the U.S.-led coalition could provide adequate security.

“The coalition has indicated to me, has promised us, it will do its utmost to protect the team that will work in Iraq,” Annan said.