Baghdad residents hungry for information about Saddam
BAGHDAD, April 14: The US general who led the invasion to topple him talks about DNA analysis.
A resident of the upmarket Baghdad district of Mansur says he saw him there three days before a US air strike obliterated a house where he was thought to be holding a meeting.
A former army official says he saw him and his two sons in front of a mosque in northern Baghdad just four days ago.
But as US forces captured Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit on Monday, no one knows whether the Iraqi leader is dead or alive.
Unable to watch television due to a power cut and with no local newspapers printed for a week, Baghdad residents are hungry for information about the fate of the man who ruled them for 24 years.
Rumours and reported sightings are widespread.
“We have to know what his fate was. He is wanted dead or alive,” Ibtissam Ali, a 45-year-old social worker, said as stared into a 15-metre wide crater.
The US military, who have put an undisclosed price on President Saddam’s head, are also keen to know and have vowed to leave no stone unturned until they have the answers.
The crater is all that is left of the Mansur house that was bombed on April 7, following a tip that Saddam and his sons Qusay and Uday were meeting there.
US and British officials suspect Saddam escaped the strike. Neighbours say they saw Saddam’s younger son and heir Qusay alive shortly after the strike.
One man, who would only give his name as Ali, said he had seen Saddam in Mansur district three days before the attack. He said many Iraqis wanted to be sure that Saddam’s era was over.
“They are not scared,” he said. “It is like a film. They want to see the end.”
TALK OF BETRAYAL: Mohanned al-Ajil, who described himself as a former Iraqi army officer, said he saw Saddam and his sons four days ago outside a mosque in the Aadhamiya district of north Baghdad.
“He was talking with people. The people asked him how the Americans were able to enter Baghdad. He said: ‘The closest people to me betrayed me’,” Ajil said.
One rumour doing the rounds on Monday suggested Qusay’s body was in a Baghdad hospital. A doctor there dismissed the idea. “I wish his body was here. We want to get this over,” he said.
Mansur residents do not believe Saddam was killed in the air strike a week ago as no Iraqi special forces came to the site after the bombing. They also say they have not seen any Americans checking the bomb site for evidence that Saddam died.
But Washington, which failed to catch Osama bin Laden after the war to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan, is determined not to let Saddam get away.
It has made him the Ace of Spades in a pack of cards of America’s most wanted Iraqis.
Gen Tommy Franks, commander of the war in Iraq, said on Sunday that US-led forces had Saddam’s DNA and would use it to check whether attempts to kill him had succeeded.
“He’s either dead or he’s running a lot,” Franks told CNN. “He’ll simply be alive until I can confirm he’s dead.”
US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said on Monday the hunt was on for Saddam and his entourage.
“We have the forensic ability to confirm any number of members of the family that are related by blood. At this point we are doing examinations of a variety of sites,” he said.
FLIGHT TO SYRIA? US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Syria of helping senior Iraqi leaders flee.
The US military confirmed on Monday that Watban Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother and number 51 on the US list of most-wanted Iraqis, had been captured. US officials said Watban was caught near the Syrian border.
Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab al-Yawm on Monday quoted unnamed Iraqi sources as saying Qusay was killed in a strike as he tried to escape to Syria and that Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, another of Saddam’s half-brothers, was wounded in the attack.
But British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said he believed Saddam and his top aides were still in Iraq.
Mr Hoon said Saddam’s capture or death was important but not essential. “It will not mean that the military campaign is any less successful if we happen to fail to do so,” he said.
But Gustav Lindstrom, research fellow at the Paris-based EU Institute for Security, disagreed.
“If he’s not caught there will always be some speculation about not having finished the job properly,” he said. “Some people have already called him the ‘Rocky of the Middle East’, that he will survive and come back.”—Reuters
