U.S. Troops Find Bones at Saddam Bomb Site

Wednesday, June 4, 2003
(12:45 PM)
By Andrew Marshall
Reuters

Removing the rubble from the bomb site could take two weeks, and the forensic tests even longer. "It's a big hole. There's a lot of rubble to go through."

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Reuters
U.S. troops dug bones from a Baghdad bomb site Wednesday after launching a fresh search to see whether Saddam Hussein and his sons survived a bid to kill them in April with bunker-busting bombs.

Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said a more thorough search of the site in the upscale Mansur neighborhood of Baghdad had begun after intelligence reports suggested human remains were buried under the rubble.

"You can imagine that if we have an intel lead that possibly there was somebody like Saddam Hussein in that location, we exploit it," he told a news conference in Baghdad. "That's what we're doing."

Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the war against Iraq, said in April that U.S.-led forces had DNA of the former Iraqi leader and it would be used to check whether attempts to kill him had succeeded. He gave no details about how it was obtained or authenticated.

Dust hung in the air at the bomb site as troops used bulldozers and cranes to haul debris onto trucks, which took it away for forensic examination.

"We are meticulously searching the rubble and we have found some skeletal remains," said a U.S. private at the site.

Locals in Mansur say several civilians died in the bombing, and some bodies have not yet been recovered.
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Dan