The US commander in the Middle East, Gen John Abizaid, escaped unharmed from a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Iraq today, the US army said.
"At 13:30 p.m. in Falluja, General Abizaid and General (Charles) Swannack were visiting a local Iraqi civil defence corps compound when three rocket-propelled grenades were fired at their convoy from rooftops nearby," Mr Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference.
"No coalition soldiers or civilians were injured." Mr Kimmitt, the chief US military spokesman in Iraq, said American forces returned fire and unsuccessfully pursued the assailants.
Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, is a cauldron of anti-American activity in Iraq and is part of the area known as the Sunni triangle, Saddam Hussein's former power base.
Gen Abizaid is the third high-profile American official to escape an attack in Iraq.
The others are US administrator Paul Bremer, whose convoy was attacked in December, and Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose Baghdad hotel was hit by rockets.