Saddam Hussein’s sons, two of the most feared figures in his regime, were killed yesterday in a three-hour gun battle after US special forces raided a house in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul where they were hiding.
The deaths of Saddam’s two fugitive ”princes” is the biggest coup for coalition forces since the fall of Saddam and could be a turning point in the guerrilla war being conducted against US forces.
At a late-night press conference in Baghdad, General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the joint coalition taskforce for Iraq, said: ”We are certain that Uday and Qusay were killed today. We have used multiple sources to identify the individuals.”
Saddam’s sons had barricaded themselves inside the house and put up fierce resistance, he added. ”They died in a fierce gun battle. They resisted the detention and the efforts of the coalition forces to apprehend them. They were killed in the ensuing gunfight.”
Asked why US forces had launched the attack, General Sanchez said: ”We had a walk-in last night that came in and gave us the information [about where they were hiding].”
He said it was likely that the $15-million reward on each of their heads — for information leading to their discovery — would be claimed. ”We are pursuing that at this point in time. That will probably happen,” he said.
The deaths of Saddam’s sons will come as an immense relief to the US and British governments, which have been under sustained attack for justifying the invasion with questionable intelligence.
The elimination of Uday and Qusay will provide at least a temporary distraction from the intelligence scandal and will offer London and Washington precious evidence that the occupation forces are making progress towards restoring order and paving the way for a new, democratic government.
As news filtered out in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, last night, the sky erupted in tracer fire. ”It’s celebration. People have heard about what happened,” a US military spokesman said.
Also among the dead was a teenage boy. Pentagon officials suggested he could be Qusay’s 14-year-old son, who is known to travel with him. The fourth body was thought to be a bodyguard or aide. The remains were flown out of Mosul to an undisclosed location, possibly Baghdad. According to some reports, DNA tests on the bodies will be carried out in the US.
”Iraqis are always telling me that the Iraqi people will never truly believe the regime has changed until they see the bodies. Well, here are two of the bodies,” said Peter Galbraith, an Iraq expert and a former US ambassador.
In the pack of cards distributed to US troops to identify wanted members of the old regime, Qusay, the former intelligence and special forces chief was the ace of clubs. Uday, the 39-year-old eldest son with the reputation of a sadistic playboy, was the ace of hearts. The ace of spades — Saddam himself — is still at large.
According to US military officials, as a result of the tip-off 200 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division went to a mansion in al-Falah neighbourhood in north Mosul, the home of a wealthy building contractor, thought to be a cousin of Saddam.
The informant had reportedly been watching the two men for some time and was able to to tell the Americans when they were likely to be in.
”Individuals of very high interest to the coalition forces were hiding out in the building,” said Lieutenant-Colonel William Bishop. ”This morning we went to the building and surrounded it.”
An Iraqi journalist said a firefight began when US troops tried to search the businessman’s home.
When gunfire erupted from inside the Americans called in air support, marking the beginning of an intense shoot-out involving anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers and small arms.
”We received direct fire from the building multiple times. We used a scaled escalation of force,” said one soldier involved in the battle.
The soldier said US forces could not get into the building because of the small arms fire they were facing, so ”we had to use bigger calibre weapons to render the building safe”.
Eyewitnesses said the stone, columned two-storey building was left charred and smouldering, its high facade riddled with gaping holes from bullets and heavy weaponry and its roof caved in after it was apparently hit by a missile from Kiowa helicopters.
An Iraqi teenage boy was also killed in the crossfire; several Iraqi civilians were wounded. One American soldier was shot in the chest but was said last night to be in a stable condition.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, briefed President George Bush about the operation. The death yesterday of the 39th US soldier from hostile fire since Mr Bush declared the conflict to be over on May 1 highlighted the pressure his forces are under.
Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and a member of the US-backed interim governing authority, claimed that the INC had been helping US forces track down Saddam’s sons.
”We have been working very hard to develop information on the whereabouts of Saddam and his sons,” Chalabi told journalists at the United Nations yesterday.
Uday, 39, Saddam’s eldest son, was notorious throughout Iraq for his cruelty and playboy lifestyle. Qusay, born in 1966, was one of his father’s most trusted lieutenants. – Guardian Unlimited Â