Sadam's Sons May Have Been Killed

[Jeff O Rocks]

The U.S. military believes Saddam Hussein's eldest and highest-raking sons, Odai and Qusai Hussein, were killed Tuesday in a U.S. Army raid in northern Iraq, a senior U.S. official in Iraq told The Associated Press.


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Discuss: Postwar Iraq



But the AP source said investigators are waiting for the results of DNA tests to confirm the identities.

Unidentified Pentagon officials cited by AP say four Iraqis were killed in the raid on a house conducted by units from the 101st Airborne Division in the Iraqi city of Mosul.


CNN, citing White House sources, reported the White House is "reasonably optimistic" Odai and Qusai Hussein are dead. The two rank below only their father in importance in the fallen regime.

A U.S. military official told NBC News that Saddam's sons were "very likely" killed.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan fielded several questions on the matter during Tuesday's White House briefing but declined comment other than to confirm a military operation in northern Iraq. He deferred comment to the Department of Defense and said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush met Tuesday morning.

The raid, prompted by intelligence that the two men were in Mosul, sparked a shootout between members of the 101st Airborne Division and gunmen holed up inside.

The house belonged to a cousin of Saddam who was a key tribal leader in the region. Mosul residents say the American soldiers were looking for Odai and Qusai. The hideout later burned to the ground.

The United States has offered a $15 million bounty for each of the sons -- with a $25 million bounty for Saddam himself. But officials say they have no information suggesting Saddam was present during the raid.

[Caniac]

Good riddance!

[HockeyPat]

Hell just became a little more crowded. Too bad they couldn't have gone to trial and suffered all that embarrassment.

[nccanes]

I forget, is this the 3rd or 4th time they think they killed them? :eek2:

Sorry couldn't resist. :evil:

[Shell]

That is what I was thinking Eileen! I'm a major news buff and I didn't even click on the story LOL

[talkingcanes]

according to all the news sources they've been positively identified. here's hoping it's them and that it was a slow, painful death. and here's hoping Papa joins them soon.

[Alicia]

Yes, CNN Breaking News says they have been confirmed dead.

[Stormbringer]

Good riddance!

I echo thy sentiment... http://www.gamers-forums.com/smilies/otn/wink/thumb.gif

[Shell]

It is great news for sure. What horrible people they were.

It's also on the militaries central command website:
http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/news_release.asp?NewsRelease=20030768.txt

[Shell]

Might have gotten his grandson and other family as well:

Saddam's Teenage Grandson May Have Made Last Stand
2 hours, 52 minutes ago
By Cynthia Johnston

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s teenage grandson Mustapha may have been the last man standing after U.S. troops launched a missile barrage on a house where he had holed up with his father and uncle.

Three adults dead around him, the soldiers said he fired on them as they stormed into the ruins. They shot him down.

Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez described on Wednesday the massive firepower from land and air that killed Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay and two others, as yet unidentified, after Tuesday's siege in the city of Mosul.

Automatic gunfire from a barricaded upper-story room had wounded four soldiers when they first tried to detain the men.

Officials in Washington say one of the dead was Qusay's 14- year-old son. Details remain sketchy and it was not entirely clear the last survivor was the youngster but Sanchez's account indicated as much.

A barrage of 10 anti-tank missiles is likely to have killed the adults in the house, Sanchez told a news conference.

"We believe that it is likely that the TOW missile attack was what wound up killing three of the adults," said Sanchez, land forces commander in Iraq (news - web sites).

But when troops burst up the staircase, they came under fire again. "They killed the remaining individual," Sanchez said.

Around 200 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division pounded the house with grenades, rocket-firing Kiowa attack helicopters and Humvees mounted with heavy .50 caliber machineguns and the anti-tank missiles on Tuesday.

On standby were A-10 Warthog tankbuster aircraft, Apache attack helicopters and a psy-ops team but they were not used.

The proximity of neighboring houses was a factor in not using heavier weaponry, Sanchez said. "We know of no collateral damage that occurred as a result of the operation," he said.

STARTED WITH A BULLHORN

Sanchez said the raid, initiated after a tip from an Iraqi "walk-in source" who will probably get the two $15 million rewards offered for information on Saddam's sons, started with shouts over a bullhorn to surrender.

"We did not get a response," Sanchez said.

When soldiers entered the house, they came under rifle fire from the men, who had barricaded themselves in a fortified upstairs section of the villa. Four soldiers were hurt early on -- three on the staircase and one outside the house.

U.S. forces then called in more firepower. They tried later to enter the house a second time but again came under fire and withdrew.

"We began to employ Humvee-mounted TOW missiles," Sanchez said. "We fired 10 TOW missiles into the house."

The concrete mansion, home to a businessman who neighbors said may have been the informer, was left a shattered ruin.

When they entered the house a third time, only one person was left alive to shoot at U.S. soldiers, who killed him.

[Shell]

wow, thought this was an interesting article from The Times (UK paper)

Secrets of Saddam's family at war
From Catherine Philp in Baghdad

UDAY HUSSEIN’S personal bodyguard broke a three-month silence yesterday to give the first authoritative account of how Saddam and his sons spent the war.

In an exclusive interview with The Times, the bodyguard claimed that, far from fleeing Baghdad, the three men held out in the capital for at least a week after its fall.

He said that they evaded repeated American attempts to assassinate or capture them, and even appeared in public under the noses of US troops.

During a three-hour interview in a house in a town an hour northwest of Baghdad, the bodyguard said that Saddam and his sons had remained in the capital throughout the war, convinced they could hold the city.

When the first bombs fell on a house in a southern suburb, where the Americans believed Saddam and his sons were meeting, he and Uday were on the other side of the city in one of dozens of safe houses belonging to trusted friends and relatives through which the three men were to pass in the weeks to come.

The bodyguard said the Americans’ next “decapitation” strike came a lot closer, and that Saddam survived only because several safe houses had come under attack and he suspected there was an informant within his camp.

Saddam asked the suspect, a captain, to prepare a safe house behind a restaurant in the Mansour district for a meeting. They arrived, and left again, almost immediately, by the back door. “Ten minutes after they went out of the door, it was bombed,” the bodyguard said.

Saddam had the captain summarily executed while the Pentagon was claiming that the strike had probably finished off Saddam and Uday.

The 28-year-old man, who asked for his real name to be kept secret for fear of reprisals, served as one of Uday’s coterie of handpicked personal bodyguards from 1997 until the moment his former boss finally left Baghdad to organise guerrilla resistance further north.

Uday bade him farewell with a $1,000 golden handshake, promising to be in touch again “when he was needed”. On Tuesday US troops killed Saddam’s son in a gunfight in the northern city of Mosul. Yesterday the Pentagon released pictures of his mutilated head.

When Baghdad fell on April 9, the three men were in separate houses in Adhamiya, a Sunni neighbourhood full of loyalists where Saddam had been on a televised walkabout two days before.

Uday’s bodyguard was not present on that occasion, but was there two days later when, to the astonishment of all around, Saddam and his sons appeared at Friday prayers at a mosque in Adhamiya, a few miles from where American troops were patrolling.

“There were crowds all around and an old woman came up to Saddam and asked, ‘What have you done to us?’,” the bodyguard recalled.

“Saddam clapped his hand to his head and said, ‘What can I do? I trusted the commanders but they were traitors and they betrayed Iraq. But we hope that, before long, we will be back in power and everything will be fixed’.”

The men never appeared in public again, but the bodyguard said that they were able to travel freely from safe house to safe house in unmarked cars, sometimes under the noses of the Americans.

“Once we were in Mansour, their convoy was going by and we just drove right past them in ordinary cars. They never saw us,” he said.

For an increasingly anxious Uday, it was a moment of comic relief. “He made fun of them. When he saw a soldier with a red face, he said, ‘That’s not a soldier for war’.” Uday offered an obscene suggestion of what the soldier’s face might be better used for.

The bodyguard said that Saddam and his sons had remained in Baghdad in the genuine belief that they could hold the city. Only later, when they believed they had been betrayed by their commanders, did they consider an alternative. “The resistance was not factored in before the war,” he said. “There was a closed meeting five or six days after the war, and that is when they began to discuss the resistance.”

A couple of days afterwards, the bodyguard was summoned by Uday, who handed him $1,000 in cash and said he could go home. Uday would not say where he was going — only that it was time to begin the resistance. “He said you can go. We’ll get you when we need you,” the bodyguard said. “They only kept their relatives with them after that. They didn’t trust anyone else.”

Soul-searching before release of morgue pictures

The Pentagon released photographs of the bloodied, mutilated heads of Uday and Qusay Hussein last night to persuade Iraqis that the sons of the former dictator really were dead.

The decision was made by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, after a heated debate within the Administration. Television crews will be allowed to film the bodies in Baghdad today.

One photograph shows Uday with a wound obliterating part of his nose and upper lip, fuelling speculation that he committed suicide. A Pentagon official told The Times: “We were disgusted when the Somalis televised images of dead US troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. There are many here who feel this is no better.”

But Mr Rumsfeld argued that Iraqis were “frightened of Saddam Hussein and his regime. To get closure, to have two vicious members confirmed dead, I believe will contribute to more Iraqis coming forward.”

Readers may find the photographs disturbing.