Saddam Hussein survived an attack on a building in Baghdad in which he was reported to have been meeting his sons Uday and Qusay on Monday afternoon, British intelligence sources said last night.
”He was probably not in the building when it was bombed,” a well-placed source said. The source added it was believed that Saddam had been in the building earlier.
The American pilot of a B-1 bomber circling nearby was told the Iraqi president had entered the building. Twelve minutes later, the pilot dropped four 900kg joint direct attack munitions bombs on it.
Intelligence sources declined to say how the information about the Iraqi leader’s whereabouts was gleaned, whether from listening devices, special forces, or Iraqi informers on the ground. Pentagon officials had referred to three credible sources of ”human intelligence” locating Saddam in the building, in the upmarket district of Mansour, which is still under Iraqi control.
As fighting continued in Baghdad yesterday, American fire killed three journalists in attacks on the al-Jazeera office and on the Palestine Hotel on the east bank of the Tigris. At least 50 Iraqi fighters were killed, one American officer said, during a day in which US forces seized Rashid airport, in Baghdad, and fought back an Iraqi counterattack as they tightened their control of the capital. Coalition troops entered the city from the north for the first time, officials said.
The Iraqi information ministry and the Ba’ath party headquarters were apparently targeted by American bombs, and two US soldiers were injured in sniper fire.
The intelligence sources described their view that President Saddam had not been killed in Monday’s attack as a ”preliminary assessment”, presumably from intelligence in Baghdad. But the Pentagon said yesterday that it could be days before it was known for certain who had died.
At least 40 senior officials were understood to be meeting Saddam and his sons in a bunker at the back of the building, connected to a restaurant. Iraqi officials said they found two bodies in the rubble and were searching for another 14 they thought were still buried, but said no members of the leadership had been killed.
A Pentagon official said determining Saddam’s fate might rest on DNA tests — based on samples the US is said to have obtained from his relatives or perhaps even the Iraqi leader himself.
Lieutenant Colonel Fred Swan, the bomber’s weapons officer, said the crew had sensed it ”might be the big one”. But Major General Stanley McChrystal, at the Pentagon, said: ”We do not have hard battle damage assessment on what individuals were or were not there.”
The US sought to play down the matter. ”I don’t think it matters that much. I’m not losing sleep trying to figure out if he was in there,” the defence department spokeswoman, Torie Clarke, said.
”I don’t know whether he survived,” President George Bush said in Belfast. ”The only thing I know is he’s losing power.”
In a counterattack which US commanders described as serious, Iraqi T-72 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and surface-to-air missiles attacked coalition troops, and Iraqi soldiers drove trucks and buses full of fighters across the Tigris in an attempt to overrun a US position. Two US airmen were listed as missing on Tuesday after their F-15E warplane went down in Iraq on Sunday. – Guardian Unlimited Â