0
BAGHDAD, July 23: Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s teenage grandson, Mustapha, may have been the last man standing after US troops launched a missile barrage on a house in Mosul where he had holed up with his father, Qusay, and uncle, Uday.
Three adults dead around him, the soldiers said he fired on them as they stormed into the ruins. They shot him down.
Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, US land forces commander in Iraq, described on Wednesday the massive firepower from land and air that killed Saddam Hussein’s sons and two others, as yet unidentified, after Tuesday’s siege in Mosul.
Automatic gunfire from a barricaded upper-storey room had wounded four soldiers when they first tried to detain the men.
Officials in Washington say one of the dead was Qusay’s 14- year-old son. Details remain sketchy and it was not entirely clear the last survivor was the youngster, but Gen Sanchez’s account indicated as much.
BLOW-BY-BLOW ACCOUNT: A barrage of 10 anti-tank missiles is likely to have killed the adults in the house, the commander said at a news conference.
“We believe that it is likely that the TOW missile attack was what wound up killing three of the adults,” said Ricardo Sanchez.
But when troops burst up the staircase, they came under fire again. “They killed the remaining individual,” he said.
Around 200 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division pounded the house with grenades, rocket-firing Kiowa attack helicopters and Humvees mounted with heavy .50 calibre machineguns and the anti-tank missiles.
On standby were A-10 Warthog tankbuster aircraft, Apache attack helicopters and a psy-ops team but they were not used.
The proximity of neighbouring houses was a factor in not using heavier weaponry, Gen Sanchez said. “We know of no collateral damage that occurred as a result of the operation,” he said.
STARTED WITH A BULLHORN: The US general said the raid, initiated after a tip from an Iraqi “walk-in source” who will probably get the two 15 million dollar rewards offered for information on Saddam’s sons, started with shouts over a bullhorn to surrender.
“We did not get a response,” Gen Sanchez said.
When soldiers entered the house, they came under rifle fire from the men, who had barricaded themselves in a fortified upstairs section of the villa. Four soldiers were hurt early on — three on the staircase and one outside the house.—Reuters
