Washington Post
July 23, 2003
Pg. 1

Hussein's Two Sons Killed In Firefight With U.S. Troops

Tip Led Soldiers to Raid Northern Iraq Mansion

By Kevin Sullivan and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post Foreign Service

MOSUL, Iraq, July 22 -- The two sons of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein were killed today during a lengthy and intense gun battle with U.S. soldiers who raided an opulent stone mansion after receiving a tip from an informant, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq said.

Qusay Hussein, 37, the onetime heir apparent who led Iraq's elite Special Republican Guard military force, and Uday Hussein, 39, a playboy and publisher who commanded the Saddam's Fedayeen militia, died in the course of a six-hour military operation in Mosul, about 220 miles north of Baghdad.

"We are certain that Uday and Qusay were killed today," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said at a late-night news conference in Baghdad. He said the bodies, which were "in a condition where you could identify them," were confirmed by "multiple sources" to be the former president's two sons.

The deaths of Hussein's sons, who earned a reputation for brutality in both their official and personal lives, could have a major impact on efforts to squelch attacks against U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq and could also help narrow the search for the former president, military officials and analysts said.

In the latest attack on U.S. troops, one soldier was killed and another wounded in an ambush today on a road northwest of Baghdad, in an area dominated by the minority Sunni Muslims from whom Hussein drew much of his support. A Sri Lankan Red Cross technician was killed in a separate incident near the town of Hilla in central Iraq.

Although U.S. military officials said the brothers' deaths could result in an immediate wave of retribution attacks, they contended that the elimination of two such prominent figures in Hussein's hierarchy would demoralize many former soldiers, Baath Party militiamen and other paramilitary fighters who have carried out recent resistance attacks out of loyalty to the former president and his family.

"This will prove to the Iraqi people that at least these two members of the regime will not be coming back into power, which is what we've stated over and over again," Sanchez said.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq, called the deaths "good news for the Iraqi people."

Sanchez said a "walk-in" informer provided U.S. forces with information on Monday night about the whereabouts of the two men, who ranked immediately behind their father atop the U.S. military's list of most-wanted Iraqis. The general said the U.S. government probably would pay the informer a $15 million reward that had been promised for information leading to the capture or death of each of Hussein's sons.

As preliminary reports of the deaths were broadcast on Arabic-language satellite television stations, thousands of Baghdad residents poured out of their homes to dance, shout and fire AK-47 assault rifles into the air. Red tracer rounds arced across the night sky, and horns blared on the capital's streets.

"We are really happy because now we can say for sure that we have gotten rid of the old regime," said Ibrahim Ali, 26, a student who ran into a street in eastern Baghdad with his rifle. "I don't believe that Saddam Hussein will be a danger anymore without Uday and Qusay."

Qusay Hussein was in charge of Iraq's most elite security services, heading the Special Security Organization service and the National Security Council in addition to the Special Republican Guard. Quiet and reclusive, he was widely regarded as his father's successor before Saddam Hussein's government was ousted.

Uday was his brother's opposite. Flamboyant and reckless, he was the heir apparent until he murdered one of Hussein's bodyguards at a party. He collected luxury cars by the hundreds and reportedly ordered his guards to snatch young women off the street so that he could rape them. In addition to controlling Saddam's Fedayeen, he published the country's most popular newspaper, ran a youth-oriented television station and was chairman of the country's Olympic committee, whose offices housed his personal jail and torture chamber.

The raid that claimed the brothers' lives began at about 10 a.m., when soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, which is responsible for a swath of Iraq that includes Mosul, swooped in on the three-story house in the city's northern Falah neighborhood. The uniformed soldiers, driving in Humvees equipped with .50-caliber machine guns and Avenger missiles, were accompanied by members of Task Force 20, a combination of Special Operations forces and CIA operatives assigned to search for top leaders of Hussein's government, a senior defense official in Washington said.

Brig. Gen. Frank Helmick, the assistant commander of 101st Airborne, said the military had received intelligence reports that suggested "high-value targets" were inside the house, a gaudy stone edifice with tall, Greek-style columns in the front. Sanchez did not describe the tipster or identify the person's relationship with Hussein's sons.

Neighbors identified the owner of the house as Nawaf Zaidan, a businessman who said he was related to Hussein and a member of the former president's Abu Nasr tribe.

The senior defense official said early indications suggested that the two sons had been living in the house "for some time." Shahir Khazraji, 31, who lives across the street, said Zaidan told one of his neighbors that Qusay, Uday, one of Hussein's bodyguards and Qusay's son Mustafa, 14, had been in the house for 23 days.

Khazraji said he saw Zaidan leave the house with his family around 6 a.m. and return at about 9 with just his 19-year-old son. At around 9 a.m., Khazraji said, a small group of U.S. soldiers came to the front door and demanded to search the house.

Zaidan refused. A short while later, Khazraji said, Zaidan and his son were taken by the soldiers to a nearby house and told to wait there. Khazraji said he was told by the owner of the second house that Zaidan told the soldiers they could not search the premises, telling them, "I can't let you into my house because I have an important official of the government in there."

An Arabic-speaking soldier subsequently used a megaphone to order the occupants to leave, neighbors said. Although the patrol then withdrew briefly, witnesses said about 100 soldiers returned at about 10 a.m. in about 25 vehicles.

Helmick said his soldiers were fired upon from inside the house. Khazraji and other residents said U.S. soldiers shot first.

The exchange quickly escalated into an all-out firefight involving automatic weapons, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades. Witnesses said bullets whizzed across the street, and tonight Khazraji's house was pocked with bullet holes and .50-caliber shell casings still littered the street.

As the fire from inside the house died down, the soldiers eventually fought their way in. When they reached the second floor, they found it fortified with bulletproof glass and barricades, leading commanders to summon two OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters. The helicopters fired 2.75-inch rockets and at least one missile at the upper floors of the house, sparking a fire that eviscerated much of the structure.

Helmick said his soldiers entered the house at 1 p.m. and recovered four bodies. "They came out dead," he said.

According to a senior administration official in Washington, the Hussein brothers' remains were identified by Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti, Hussein's presidential secretary and top security adviser, who was captured on June 16 and remains under interrogation. The other two bodies reportedly were those of Qusay's son and the bodyguard.

The house is located on an eight-lane road in a crowded residential and commercial neighborhood. There is a large mosque across the street, about 150 yards from the house.

Helmick said he had AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and other heavy arms at the ready, but "we did not use them on purpose. We took extra caution and special care to focus on precision gunning on this building."

Four U.S. soldiers were wounded in the raid, according to U.S. Central Command in Florida.

Chandrasekaran reported from Baghdad. Staff writers Bradley Graham and Dana Priest in Washington contributed to this report.

<hl>

USA Today
July 23, 2003
Pg. 1

When Uday And Qusay Didn't Give Up, Bullets Started Flying

This time, tip pans out; many in Iraq, and Washington, cheer pair's demise

By John Diamond and Tom Squitieri, USA Today

From the moment the tip from an Iraqi informant came in sometime Monday night, elements of the 101st Airborne Division needed only hours to zero in on the imposing house in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The U.S. troops were ready to take its occupants quietly if they could, by force if they had to.

The informant — identified in some reports as the house's owner, a cousin of Saddam Hussein and a local tribal leader — came to U.S. forces with word that Saddam Hussein's two elder sons, integral and brutal officials in his regime, were hiding out in a Mosul neighborhood.

It was like hundreds of tips U.S. troops and intelligence officers field every day in Iraq. But this one included detail that captured the attention of U.S. commanders: The house in question had already been under surveillance as a suspected way station for members of Saddam's ousted regime trying to escape to Syria.

The tip triggered an intense military operation that eventually involved CIA operatives, special operations troops, ground forces and aircraft.

By 8:45 a.m. Iraq time Tuesday, a small group of U.S. troops arrived at the house and asked the occupants for permission to search. Permission was denied. The troops withdrew, but only temporarily. An hour later, a much larger force, at least 100, moved in. By 10 a.m., more than 300 members of the 101st Airborne Division along with special operations units had the concrete building surrounded.

Demands that the occupants surrender were met by small arms fire from inside. That touched off a fusillade from the U.S. troops. At the height of the firefight, witnesses said, hundreds of U.S. troops poured fire into the thick-walled concrete villa, while Kiowa helicopters rocketed the building from the sky.

The intense fire wrecked the interior of the house and left its high facade riddled with bullet holes. Two adjacent homes were severely damaged, and some Mosul citizens were caught in the crossfire. It was not known how many were injured, but several were taken to a hospital.

Four hours later it was all over. Four badly shot-up bodies were inside the house. By Tuesday afternoon, the bodies were at a U.S. military base at Bayji, a town about halfway between Baghdad and Mosul.

Several Iraqi officials in Saddam's regime already in custody positively identified two of them as Uday and Qusay Hussein — after Saddam himself the two most wanted men in Iraq. The Bush administration had scored a huge victory in a war that has grown costly in American lives in Iraq and taken a political toll on the president at home.

As celebratory gunfire erupted in Baghdad, U.S. officials exulted in Washington and predicted that the cooperation that led to an almost Wild West-style shoot-out Tuesday would soon bring U.S. forces to Saddam's doorstep.

"This is a really great day for the Iraqi people," said Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, after he briefed lawmakers in closed session at the Capitol. "We've seen an increase in informants coming forward to our military, to our intelligence people, and to our police in the last three weeks," he said. "It's only a matter of time before we find Saddam Hussein."

In Baghdad, U.S. military commanders provided few details of the raid but viewed it as a turning point in the struggle to restore order to Iraq almost three months after the Bush administration declared an end to major combat operations.

Proof they're gone

"I believe very firmly that this will, in fact, have an effect," Lt. Gen. Rick Sanchez, commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq, told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. "This will prove to the Iraqi people that at least these two members of the regime will not be coming back to power."

A pervasive fear among Iraqis that Saddam and his sons, known for their ruthless rule, would somehow stage a comeback has haunted the U.S. mission in Iraq for weeks, hampering efforts to pacify loyalists to Saddam's Baath Party and to gain full cooperation even from those Iraqis who hated the dictator.

Capturing or killing Saddam and his sons was regarded as essential to the success of the U.S. mission. And a special team dispatched by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to assess the situation had reported back last week that time was running out if the mission was to succeed.

Two other Iraqis were killed in the firefight: one a bodyguard, the second tentatively identified as a 14-year-old who may be Qusay's son.

U.S. forces and Iraqi police entered the villa and conducted a search. The U.S. troops were, in the term of art, "exploiting" the site for any information about Saddam's whereabouts.

About 1,000 Iraqis gathered outside, some expressing delight, others cursing the Americans.

Mosul, a city of 1.5 million 240 miles northwest of Baghdad, had been rife with rumors that senior regime members were hiding there. They would not have been in what Saddam would consider friendly territory. While Arabs loyal to Saddam live in Mosul, the population includes a mix of Kurds, Turkmen and Assyrian Christians, groups repressed by Saddam's regime.

The mission was not an unqualified success. U.S. intelligence had badly wanted Saddam's sons captured alive. The pair was believed to be moving frequently from hideout to hideout across northern Iraq, keeping just ahead of the U.S. forces that have been pursuing them. Intelligence officials believed the two might have been among the few who had solid information on the whereabouts of Saddam himself.

"They had the opportunity to hand themselves in to justice and answer for their crimes. They refused to do this," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a statement issued in London.

"It goes without saying that we would much have preferred this. But the news that Saddam's sons are no longer a threat to the security of Iraq will be a reassurance to the Iraqi people," Straw said.

'Give up or go down'

A U.S. intelligence official said the ability of Uday and Qusay to elude capture until Tuesday made U.S. commanders unwilling to risk their getting away. The sons were given the choice of walking out with their hands up or dying, he said.

"Resistance was futile and totally stupid," the intelligence official said. "They have slipped the noose just once too often. 'Give up or go down' was the battle cry of this operation."

Agence France-Presse news service reported that the owner of the house where the raid took place, Nawaf Zaidan, was the "walk-in" informant who tipped U.S. forces that Saddam's sons were hiding there. U.S. intelligence officials declined to confirm that report. U.S. officials are eager to signal that they will protect the identity of any Iraqi who comes forward with information.

A female relative of Zaidan, who asked not to be named, told AFP that Zaidan "is believed to have informed U.S. forces that Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, Qusay's son, and a bodyguard named Abdul Samad took refuge in his house and he wanted to get rid of them."

The tipster may collect all or a substantial portion of $15 million rewards U.S. authorities had offered for information leading to the capture or killing of the two sons. The price on Saddam's head is $25 million.

Uday and Qusay were the "ace of clubs" and "ace of hearts" respectively on the U.S. "deck of cards" of regime officials. With their death, 36 of 55 Iraqis on the U.S. most-wanted list have been captured or killed.

Jubilation in Washington

The news electrified Washington, where the Bush administration has been struggling against an onslaught of negative news coverage focusing on the near daily casualties being suffered by U.S. forces in Iraq and the growing questions about whether the administration overstated the case about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Rumsfeld canceled a planned trip to Kansas for an event in honor of former senator Bob Dole to brief President Bush. In a call to the White House at mid-morning Tuesday, Rumsfeld told the president that U.S. troops had been in a firefight in Mosul and that it looked like Saddam's two sons were among those killed. But he cautioned that it would take time to identify the bodies.

An hour later, late Tuesday morning, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, Rumsfeld told Bush in another call that one reliable source had verified that Uday and Qusay were dead.

Vice President Cheney lunched with Republican senators, putting out the then-tentative word that the two sons were likely dead. And at 3:30 p.m. ET, Rumsfeld called Chief of Staff Andrew Card to tell him that the deaths of the two sons had been fully verified. Card then went to the Oval Office and informed the president as Lt. Gen. Sanchez's briefing was about to begin, just before midnight Baghdad time.

McClellan said Bush called Tuesday's firefight "positive news for the Iraqi people" and praised the skill and bravery of the troops involved and of the quality of the intelligence that led to the operation.

McClellan also said it was "further assurance that the regime is gone. They were the leaders of a brutal regime."

In the confusion of gunfire across Baghdad, a unit of the Florida Army National Guard, believing that it was coming under fire, shot a man twice in the chest and shot a girl who looked to be between 6 and 8 years old once in the head.

Contributing: Dave Moniz, Barbara Slavin, richard Benedetto, wire reports