WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — The U.S. military bombed a building in Baghdad Monday after intelligence reports that President Saddam Hussein and his two sons may have been inside, but it was unclear if they were killed or injured, U.S. officials said.
The building was destroyed, which might make it difficult to prove who was killed inside, sources said.
“We are confirming that a leadership target was hit very hard,” Maj. Brad Bartlett, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command war headquarters in Qatar, told reporters. “Battle damage assessment is ongoing.”
He said a U.S. B-1 bomber using four 2,000-pound bombs hit the target in the Baghdad district of Mansur Monday afternoon Iraqi time.
“There was intelligence that came in this morning which suggested that there was a gathering of Iraqi intelligence officials and possibly including Saddam and both of his sons in a residential district of Baghdad,” a U.S. official told Reuters.
The information was passed to Central Command, which authorized aircraft in the area to bomb the site. There was no confirmation yet that Saddam or his sons were killed in the strike, but anyone inside was not likely to have survived, the official said.
“It’s a hole in the ground,” the official said. “It might be difficult to prove (who was killed), but a lot of effort will go into determining it.”
The Mansur neighborhood is a stronghold of Saddam’s Baath Party. Security and military intelligence headquarters are located in the area, and the district is also home to many military officers.
Two houses were flattened and four other buildings were badly damaged in the air raid Monday that witnesses said killed nine Iraqis and wounded four others.
A security guard said people were buried under the rubble, and he said one missile gouged a crater 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide in the road.
During what Iraqi television said was a recent tour of bombed areas of Baghdad, Saddam, who rarely appears in public, was seen passing through several districts of the capital, including Mansur, where he was greeted by cheering crowds.
Intense speculation
The fate of Saddam and his sons, Qusay and Uday, has been the subject of intense speculation since they were targeted in an initial U.S. strike March 20 (March 19 U.S. time) on a residential compound on the outskirts of Baghdad.
U.S. officials say proving Saddam is dead might prompt Iraqi resistance to U.S. forces to fade more quickly.
“It might mean that what is left of the regime will become unglued more quickly, which will stop the war in a timelier fashion,” a U.S. official said.
Since the initial bombing last month that started the U.S.-led war against Iraq, a man believed to be Saddam has been seen on videotapes aired on Iraqi television, but it has been unclear when those tapes were made, shedding little light on whether the Iraqi president survived that first strike.
CIA analysts have been reviewing the Saddam broadcasts and believe it was “more likely than not that the tapes are genuine of Saddam,” but it was still unclear when they were recorded and a final determination on the tapes had not been reached, a third U.S. official said.
Earlier, the British military said it believed a previous strike killed Saddam’s cousin “Chemical Ali” in southern Iraq.
“We believe we have found the body of Chemical Ali; however, we need to get that confirmed,” said a British spokesman at Central Command headquarters.
