Thursday, July 24, 2003
The U.S. defense secretary said he'll release photos of the Hussein brothers' bodies.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three American soldiers were killed today when their convoy was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in northern Iraq, a military spokeswoman said. In Baghdad, two Iraqis were killed when their car approached a U.S. military checkpoint.
The killings of the Americans were further signs that an Iraqi insurgency is not losing strength as Washington hoped after the deaths Tuesday of Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai.
In Baghdad, some members of Iraq's Governing Council were shown the brothers' bodies, which are being kept at Baghdad International Airport, said a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The authority also was talking with council members about how to release pictures of the bodies to the public, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. Many Iraqis likely will be skeptical of the U.S. account without proof of the brothers' deaths.
"There isn't the slightest doubt in our minds that these are the bodies of Odai and Qusai," the spokesman said.
Soldiers attacked
V Corps spokeswoman Spc. Nicole Thompson said the soldiers, members of the 101st Airborne Division, were traveling in a convoy toward Qayyarah, 185 miles north of the capital, Baghdad, when they were attacked about 2:30 a.m. No soldiers were reported wounded and it was not known whether any assailants were killed or wounded.
It was the second attack in two days that killed members of the division, which led the fiery assault in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul that killed Odai and Qusai Hussein.
On Wednesday, two American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on their convoys, including one near Mosul.
The latest deaths brought to 158 the number of U.S. servicemen killed in action since the war began March 20, surpassing by 11 the death toll in the 1991 Gulf War.
Odai and Qusai were Nos. 2 and 3 on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted from the toppled Saddam regime. Guerrilla holdouts loyal to the regime have attacked U.S. forces at a rate of about 12 times a day in an effort to wear down the Americans and drive them from the country.
Revenge tape
Arab satellite broadcaster al-Arabiya aired a tape of what it said were a group of Saddam Fedayeen vowing revenge for the deaths of Odai and Qusai Hussein.
"We want to say to the occupation forces, they said last night that killing Odai and Qusai will diminish [resistance] attacks but we want to say to them that their death will increase attacks against them," one of three masked men in the tape read from a statement.
The Fedayeen militia was once led by Odai. Coalition officials have repeatedly blamed former militia members for some of the attacks on U.S. soldiers.
To prove to Iraqis that Saddam's sons are dead, Defense Secretary H. Donald Rumsfeld said the United States would release photographs of their bodies, but he did not say when. The photos are likely to be gruesome because the fighting to capture the house was intense.
In Sadr City, a poor suburb of Baghdad formerly called Saddam City, some residents wanted to be sure the brothers were dead.
"We heard about Odai and Qusai being killed and, frankly, we are happy," Fadil Abbas told Associated Press Television News. "The question is, what's the proof of them being killed? We heard about it, but we haven't seen any proof so far."
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition troops in Iraq, said the brothers -- along with two other Iraqis believed to be a bodyguard and Qusai's teenage son, Mustafa -- barricaded themselves on the second floor of a three-story home in Mosul. He said they were killed after anti-tank rockets were fired from Humvees during a four-hour siege.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in London, Izzedin Kamel Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of the two brothers, said Odai and Qusai likely were relaxing in the Mosul home when the American soldiers approached it.
"They went to this man in particular because he was a member of the family and they thought they could stay there for a while, be safe and then go somewhere else," he said.
Iraqis are killed
In Baghdad today, two Iraqi men were killed after the car they were in approached a U.S. checkpoint near the downtown al-Geilani mosque and American troops opened fire. Witnesses told AP the two men were killed after the car caught fire.
"We told the driver not to go ahead because there was an American checkpoint," said Mahmoud Haider, 50, who witnessed the shooting. "He refused."
Military spokesman Spc. Giovanni Lorente had no information about the shooting, but Thompson, the V Corps spokeswoman, said American troops had cordoned off the Sunni mosque and searched it.
Mustafa Tariq, 28, a private security guard at the mosque, said about 150 soldiers searched "every room" of the building, including the shrine.
Thompson did not know why American soldiers searched the mosque.
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