Saddam Tracked to 'Sunni' North Iraq:

Over 26,000 American Troops Engaged in Aggressive Hunt

June 24, 2003

MORE than 26,000 Amer ican troops are engaged in an aggressive hunt for Saddam Hussein in a region north of Baghdad.

Backed by a fleet of Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), equipped with high-resolution cameras and Hellfire missiles, the Iron Horse Task Force from the US 4th Infantry Division is focusing its search in Iraq between Taji and Kirkuk.

The division is equipped with hi-tech systems enabling its units to spread out across the region to keep track of every piece of intelligence as it is gathered by troops searching houses and suspected hiding places. The hunt for Hussein, now seen as an even greater priority than the search for weapons of mass destruction, is being supervised by the CIA and an army intelligence-gathering unit known as Grey Fox, which took part in similar manhunts in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

Troops are engaged in house searches in the so-called "Sunni triangle", north and west of Baghdad, which is one of the most conservative and pro-Hussein parts of Iraq.

In the town of Habaniyah, US troops had to apologise to a family after handcuffing a number of women and children. The soldiers had been searching for an Iraqi gunman in the house next door.

The hunt for Hussein has focused on the region between Baghdad and Tikrit after last week's capture of the former dictator's aide and bodyguard, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, in the area.

General Mahmud is reported to have confirmed to American interrogators that Hussein survived the two assassination attempts during the war, and had been in hiding with his two sons since the fall of Baghdad.

Attacks on Americans in Iraq – increasingly attributed to ordinary Iraqis' suspicion their former leader is alive – continue, with one soldier killed and another injured when their convoy south of Baghdad was ambushed during a patrol.

Nearly 20 US soldiers have died in Iraqi attacks since the fall of Baghdad in April.

Iraqi civilians "mark" the passage of US columns by firing single shots in the air, firing off flares or blinking porch lights, US soldiers said. One patrol last week was dogged by such warnings for kilometres, even though it was travelling on a main highway at high speed.

A group calling itself the Iraqi National Front of Fedayeen appeared on Lebanese television at the weekend, vowing to send the dead bodies of American troops home "one after another" until the US pulled out of Iraq.

"You must know that the Iraqis have become disillusioned with your great lie about the liberation of Iraq," said a fighter.

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