An Iraqi walked into a facility of the 101st Airborne
and reported the presence of Saddam's sons in a Mosul home, said Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez in a briefing from Baghdad on Tuesday.
The United
States has offered $25 million for information that would lead to the
capture of Saddam. The award for each of Saddam's sons was set at $15
million.
Today, Sanchez will provide additional details
of the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein in a Defense Department briefing, the Pentagon said .
Officials said they did not believe that either Uday or Qusay was
involved in directing the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. military. Mosul,
regarded as a Saddam stronghold, is not located in the Sunni Triangle and
officials said many of the Sunni attacks have been carried out by Islamic
insurgents.
The two sons of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
were killed in a U.S. military operation in northern Iraq earlier Tuesday.
U.S. officials said Uday and Qusay Hussein were killed in the battle
between the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and Saddam's forces in the
northern Iraqi city of Mosul. They said about 200 U.S. soldiers, who
included members of Task Force 20, raided the home of Saddam's cousin on
in a fight that included missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
U.S. troops were supported by two OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters.
Officials said the helicopters fired several anti-tank missiles into the
Mosul house.
"Four Iraqis were killed in the operation," U.S. Central Command said in
a statement. "We have confirmed that two of the dead were Saddam's sons Uday
and Qusay."
The home of Saddam cousin Nawaf Azidan was said to have contained senior
Saddam aides. Nawaf is a leader of the Sunni tribe of Abul Nasser, which has
been loyal to Saddam.
The killing of Saddam's son comes as the U.S. Army prepares to release a
plan to rotate troops in Iraq. Officials said the plan, details of which
will be released on Wednesday, will bring new troops for one year and
maintains the current force level at nearly 150,000 troops.
Officials said the operation took six hours and that four Iraqis were
killed, including the 14-year-old son of Qusay. He said four soldiers of the
U.S. force were wounded.
"We're certain that Uday and Qusay were killed today," Sanchez, commander of the U.S. Army's Coalition Joint Task Force Seven, said
in the briefing. "We've used multiple sources to
identify the individuals."
"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 stated over
and over again,"
Sanchez said. "And we remain totally committed to the Hussein regime never
returning to power and tormenting the Iraqi people."
On Wednesday, the U.S. military reported that two U.S. soldiers were
killed in Sunni attacks, one of them on the outskirts of Mosul. At the same
time, another tape attributed to Saddam was released by the Dubai-based Al
Arabiya satellite channel. The voice purportedly that of Saddam urged Iraqis
to keep fighting the United States.
