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Troops bulldoze Saddam sons' hideout

July 27 2003

US troops with bulldozers yesterday began to demolish the villa where they killed Saddam Hussein's sons this week, after scouring it for clues on the whereabouts of the deposed dictator.

The wall surrounding the fortified villa in the northern city was knocked down and Iraqi workers clambered over the roof, pounding it with sledgehammers. The villa was partly destroyed when US troops attacked it on Tuesday with machineguns, grenades and anti-tank missiles.

Iraqis crowded round newspaper stalls in Baghdad to view gruesome photographs of the bullet-scarred and blood-spattered bodies of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay. With no press on Fridays, it was the first opportunity for some to see them.

Officials hope the pictures and television images of the bodies will convince sceptical Iraqis the brothers are dead and demoralise guerrillas who have killed 44 US soldiers since President George W Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

But American forces still come under daily attack. Ambushes in the last week have killed 11 US soldiers, five of them in the three days since Uday and Qusay were killed.

After the deaths of his sons, the net might be closing on Saddam himself, US forces said. Acting on a tip-off, they rounded up several men near his home town of Tikrit suspected of belonging to the presidential bodyguard.

"We continue to tighten the noose," 4th Infantry Division commander Major General Ray Odierno said.

Saddam, ousted by US-led forces on April 9, has a $US25 million ($37.67 million) price on his head. In his family's home town of Tikrit, between Mosul and Baghdad, US troops have been on high alert for any trace of Saddam and are coming under frequent attack.

At 4th Infantry headquarters in the town, a spokesman played down suggestions operations had been stepped up following the killings of Saddam's sons. "We are always on a high state of alert," he said.

But local people are angry at the American presence in a town that long enjoyed privileged status under the rule of its most famous son since Saladin, the scourge of the Crusaders.

"All Iraqis are going to seek revenge after the deaths of Qusay and Uday," labourer Mohammed Ali said, standing on Tikrit's dusty main street.

Soldiers on patrol and manning checkpoints said guerrilla attacks on them - already bolder and more frequent - had increased markedly in the few days since the sons' killings.

"Things are worse now," said Staff Sergeant Kenneth Maxwell, from Hartford, Connecticut, as he manned a heavy machinegun atop an armoured vehicle, watching over a checkpoint where soldiers searched Iraqi cars for weapons.

"They used to just attack us, mostly at night. But now they are attacking us during the day with AK-47s and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), at any American soldiers they can find," Maxwell said, eyes alert under the baking sun, in temperatures above 40 Celsius.

Blasts and gunfire rang out in Baghdad overnight, but the US military said there were no reports of any casualties.

Iraq's biggest selling newspaper, Azzaman, splashed colour photographs of Uday and Qusay's corpses on its front page, under a headline proclaiming the brothers were dead.

But Iraqis, raised in a culture of conspiracy theories, were divided on the identity of the waxy-looking corpses.

Two men shovelling sand at a building site said they had heard about the pictures but had no time or resources to read newspapers or watch the news, reflecting the continuing poverty, insecurity and lack of basic services Iraqis still face.

"Some people say the bodies look like Uday and Qusay and others say they don't," said one sweat-drenched labourer at a Baghdad building site. "If they really are dead, God will deal with them, but who will deal with us?"

US forces took the unprecedented step of inviting a small group of journalists to view the bodies yesterday. The faces of the two men had been retouched, making them more closely resemble Uday and Qusay in life.

Washington says it has proof of the identities based on dental and medical records and visual testimony from aides.

A burning issue is what will happen to the bodies. Muslim tradition demands they be buried quickly, but few in Iraq will want to see them become a shrine. It is possible they could be discreetly handed to clan elders in Tikrit, Saddam's home town.





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