- MOSUL, Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's
sons Odai and Qusai were "very likely" killed on Tuesday when
US soldiers stormed a house in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, US military
and Bush administration sources told Fox News.
-
- Sources at the Pentagon and within the Bush administration
told Fox News that at least four "high-level" targets were killed
inside the house, a large villa that belonged to one of Saddam's cousins.
A senior administration official said the US is "90% to 95% certain"
that Saddam's sons were among the dead.
-
- Officials said four bodies were transported out of the
house. Three were adults - believed to be Odai, Qusai and a bodyguard.
The fourth body was of a teenager - possibly Qusai's son.
-
- US officials said there will be DNA testing to confirm
the deaths. Senior defense officials said some sort of announcement would
be made later Tuesday.
-
- The US government has DNA samples on Saddam's sons, but
testing may take time.
-
- 'Shot up'
-
- One US official told Fox News that "they were shot
up" so much that it is difficult to make a positive identification
of the bodies. The United States now plans to talk to people who knew them
to identify the bodies and look for distinguishing marks.
-
- The house was burned to the ground after a loud, four-hour
gunbattle between the people inside and soldiers from the 101st Airborne
Division.
-
- Officials told Fox News that they had two pieces of intelligence
that directed them toward the house and that "there was some indication
that Qusai and Odai were inside".
-
- Residents of the city, 280 miles north of Baghdad, said
the American soldiers were searching for Saddam's sons, who have been reported
in the area. A reporter from Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said eyewitnesses
told him that Saddam's sons were in the house when it was raided.
-
- "Individuals of very high interest to the coalition
forces were hiding out in the building," Lieutenant Colonel William
Bishop of the 101st Airborne Division told Reuters.
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- Fire from building
-
- "This morning we went to the building and surrounded
it."
-
- A US soldier involved in the raid told Fox News that
US soldiers were fired at by people inside the house as they approached,
and the Americans called in helicopters and an unmanned vehicle for assistance
before storming it.
-
- "We received direct fire from the building multiple
times. We used a scaled escalation of force," the soldier told Fox
News' Steve Centanni at the scene of the firefight.
-
- The soldier said US forces couldn't get into the building
because of the small-arms fire they were facing, so "we had to use
bigger caliber weapons to render the building safe" - including missiles,
helicopters and grenade launchers.
-
- Centanni said the two-story building was "a mess".
US forces apparently used all the weapons in their arsenal, and the building,
its columns and balconies were pock-marked with bulletholes.
-
- Tunnels
-
- Members of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion of the 101st
Airborne Division, wouldn't who - if anyone - they brought out of the house,
but all the troops "have smiles on their faces and they seemed to
have carried out this mission successfully", Centanni reported.
-
- There were no US fatalities.
-
- Witnesses in the neighbourhood said there are tunnels
below the house. US forces towed away a gray SUV from the side of house.
-
- Mosul was believed to be the exit route for some of Saddam's
family members trying to get out of Iraq and flee to Syria.
-
- Fox News military analyst Colonel Bill Cowan said he
hoped Saddam's sons had been captured and not killed.
-
- "I think in this case, it'd be great to have them
alive," he said.
-
- "I think for the [Iraqi] population to see these
two guys shackled, incarcerated and really given some harsh treatment -
will have a most profound and long-term psychological advantage."
-
- The United States has offered a $25m reward for information
leading to Saddam's capture, and $15m for his sons.
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- Good intelligence
-
- Cowan added that Saddam's sons might provide good intelligence
on their father's whereabouts.
-
- "It appears that good intelligence led to this raid,"
Retired US Army Major General Paul Valleley, a Fox News military analyst,
said. "One event can lead to the other. So hopefully, this will lead
to determining in some way where Saddam may be."
-
- In Washington, President Bush's advisers were huddling
around during a conference call trying to determine whether Saddam's sons
were alive. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has briefed the president
personally on the assault.
-
- "He [Bush] will be kept appraised of any updates
as they become available," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan
told reporters. "The president is aware of the reports and is aware
of the military operation that took place today."
-
- Intelligence sources say the US task force - Task Force
20 - was going after high-level targets during the Mosul raid, but they
would not say whether the soldiers knew they were going after Odai and
Qusai.
-
- 'Hit team'
-
- Task Force 20 - including Army delta forces and CIA operatives
- was originally given the responsibility of finding Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction, but later it was ordered to refocus its efforts on hunting
down Saddam and his inner circle. Sources confirmed to Fox News that special
forces were involved with the raid.
-
- The task force is basically a "hit team" that
follows up only on solid intelligence.
-
- "I think we're all anxiously awaiting confirmation,"
about the sons' deaths, Senator Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, told Fox News Tuesday.
"There's no question they were diabolical forces in Iraq."
-
- Snowe, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said the potential death or capture of Qusai and Odai shows the world that
the US work in Iraq is far from over.
-
- "I think it goes to show how important our role
is in Iraq and continues to be that we have to remove these forces of fear,"
Snowe said. "Iraq was one of the most atrocious regimes ... no one
can really underestimate the threat that Saddam Hussein posed."
-
- I think that we all recognized that as long as Saddam
Hussein continues to exist, he poses a threat to the Iraqi people - they
will never be able to breathe easy if they know he's there."
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- Torture
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- Odai, Saddam's eldest son, was commander of Iraq's paramilitary
unit, known as the Saddam Fedayeen, and he was also chairperson of the
Iraqi Olympic Committee. He is No 3 on the coalition's most-wanted list,
after his father and Qusai.
-
- Iraqi Olympic athletes say they were routinely jailed
and tortured for losing competitions or disobeying Odai's orders.
-
- During Saddam's reign, Qusai was in charge of all the
military, intelligence and security services in Iraq, including the elite
Republican Guard and the Special Security Organisation, which protected
the regime and its weapons.
-
- From 1988 to 1999, Qusai often ordered mass executions
of several thousand prisoners, and suppressed revolts among the al-Dulaym
tribe in 1995 and among Shiites in 1997.
-
- Both Odai and Qusai were active in the management of
the general office of the military intelligence service, the Istikhbarat,
and the internal intelligence service, the Mukhabarat.
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- http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1391264,00.html
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