Saddam's sons die in raid

Saddam's sons die in raid

MOSUL, Iraq -- Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's two sons were killed yesterday 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.

Qusai Hussein, 37, the heir apparent who led Iraq's elite Special Republican Guard, and Odai Hussein, 39, a playboy and publisher who commanded Saddam's Fedayeen militia, died in the course of a six-hour military operation in Mosul, about 270 miles north of Baghdad.

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

The deaths of Saddam'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 help narrow the search for the former president, military officials and analysts said.

In the latest such attack, a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in an ambush yesterday on a road northwest of Baghdad, in an area dominated by the minority Sunni Muslims from among whom Saddam 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 Saddam's hierarchy would demoralize many of the 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.

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