SULAIMANYA (Northern Iraq), July 26: Israel is going to benefit greatly from the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government. No country could be happier than Israel with the killing of the Hussein brothers, because it marks the end of the Saddam “dynasty”.

This was stated by the chief of the Arabic section of the Kurdsat channel during an interview with Dawn this week. Fazil Suhbat said Saddam Hussein, in an effort to encourage suicide bombings in Israel, used to give $25,000 each to the families of the suicide bombers.

“Saddam was a thorn in the Israeli side. He was foolish enough to take on the Israelis. That is perhaps why he was removed,” said Mr Suhbat.

A local journalist, talking to Dawn on the condition of anonymity, said on Friday that by now most people here were convinced that war had been waged against Saddam in an effort to secure oil.

“Having observed the Middle East situation closely, I have reached the conclusion that Saddam was removed for some other sinister reason,” he said.

Kurdsat’s director of news, Barzan Othman, said some foreign fighters were busy with launching anti-US operations in Iraq.

“A few hundred fighters had come to Iraq before the war to help Saddam’s troops in their fight against the coalition forces.

After the war, he said, these people had stayed on and were now reorganizing and regrouping inside Iraqi territories so that momentum could be gained in the resistance against the occupying British and American troops.

The press office of the prime minister of the regional government of Kurdistan confirmed that some foreigners had been arrested in Kurdistan for illegally crossing the border.

Meanwhile, a great deal of debate is going on in this part of the world over the impact of the killing of Saddam’s sons on the anti-US resistance. Some analysts, like a popular weekly’s deputy chief editor, think that the resistance movement has suffered a fatal blow.

Sherko Mangury, deputy chief editor of Kurdistani News told this correspondent that as chiefs of the Elite Republican Guards and Fedayeen, Uday and Qusay themselves were directing the resistance operations.

“They were actively involved in the operations and their elimination will obviously create a big vacuum in the resistance movement,” Mr Mangury told Dawn.

In a front page editorial, Kurdistani News said that even though people should not express happiness at someone’s death, Uday and Qusay’s killing was welcome.

The largest selling weekly in northern Iraq Hawalati broke the news of the two Husseins’ killing with the headline “The corrupt sons of Saddam are dead”. The front-page news item which lay at the foot of this headline had several adjectives that are not normally attributed to people.