The top US ground commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, said here on Wednesday he had no doubt that US forces had killed Saddam Hussein’s two sons, Uday and Qusay.
”We have no doubt we have the bodies of Uday and Qusay,” Sanchez said, adding the body identification of Uday was 90%.
Sanchez said the brothers were identified by former members of the Ba’ath Party regime, and Uday was matched by X-rays of his body in comparison with a 1996 assassination attempt on his life, along with dental records for the two brothers.
Asked about their ability to convince the people of Iraq without any pictures or tangible physical evidence, Sanchez said: ”We are certain that we have Qusay and Uday.”
He added: ”We are continuing the identification process on them.”
As they complete the autopsies in the coming days, he said more information would be provided to the Iraqi people, many of whom remain sceptical about whether Uday, the enfant terrible of the regime, and Qusay, the designated heir to Saddam, are truly gone.
Sanchez defended the raid on a house in the northern city of Mosul where US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and Special Forces tried to take the two brothers alive before killing them in a shootout, along with Qusay’s son and a bodyguard.
”On whether this was a failure, absolutely not. I would never consider this a failure. Our mission is to find, kill or capture,” said Sanchez.
”We had to take the measures necessary to neutralise the target.”
He stressed they strove for a peaceful surrender.
”We did make an attempt with an interpreter and with bull horn to try to get a surrender from the personnel in the house and what we got back was return fire. And therefore we had to execute in the fashion we did,” he said.
Sanchez vowed to carry on the mission to root out the last of the holdouts of the Ba’ath regime, including Saddam who himself is still at large, missing since the fall of Baghdad on April 9.
”The ultimate objective is Saddam Hussein,” he said.
”We remain focused on the objective that America and the coalition has put forward. That is to defeat terrorism, defeat the Saddam Hussein regime, to ensure they never come back into power and ensure the freedom of the Iraqi people. We will not falter and we will not fail.”
US-led coalition forces have expressed the hope that the death or capture of the trio of Saddam and his two sons would strike a mortal blow to an insurgency against US forces, carried out by supporters of the toppled Ba’ath regime. – Sapa-AFP