Uday, Qusay buried
2003-08-02 22:25
Awja - Relatives buried Saddam Hussein's slain sons, Uday and Qusay, in their father's home village of Awja on Saturday even as another US soldier was killed in the guerrilla insurgency that shows no signs of cooling.
Uday and Qusay, the 'enfants terribles' of the old regime, and Saddam's 14-year-old grandson Mustapha, were buried in a low-key funeral in this village near the fallen dictator's powerbase of Tikrit, 175 kilometres north of Baghdad.
"The bodies came by helicopter to Tikrit airport at 09:30," said Thawrah Abed Bakr, the Tikrit regional director of the Red Crescent Society.
"We took them to the cemetery's mosque. We prayed and we buried them in the family grave. Everything was finished by 12:30. I had been told to do it secretly by the family and the tribe," she said.
Relatives in white robes mourned over the brown dirt mound, covered with a white, red and black Iraqi flag. The bodies lay beneath.
Karim Suleiman al-Majid, an uncle, and tribal chieftains of Saddam's family, Mohammed al-Nada and Ali al-Nada, attended the funeral of the trio gunned down 11 days ago in a shootout with US forces in the northern city of Mosul, Bakr said.
US troops turned others away, who then pressed against the cemetery gates to say goodbye to Tikrit's favourite sons who were hated elsewhere in the country for their legacy of brutality.
Arrangements for the burial
Over the past week, coalition officials had said they were consulting with Iraq's interim Governing Council and religious authorities about arrangements for the burial, as they feared the men's tombs could become a rallying point for Saddam supporters.
The funeral ceremony looked to be the final chapter in the saga that saw many Iraqis react with a mixture of scepticism, suspicion, and, of course, relief to the news of the men's deaths.
In what amounted to an advertisement for betraying Saddam, US boss in Iraq Paul Bremer boasted on Saturday about the tip-off leading to the deaths of Uday and Qusay and said the US government had sent the informant abroad.
"In the most famous case, someone told us where to find Uday and Qusay. Within hours they were dead. Less than two weeks later, we have paid the informant $30 million and relocated him and his family safely outside of Iraq," Bremer told reporters in Baghdad.
"We are going to get Saddam, too. The only question is who is going to get the $25 million (bounty on his head) and move to another country."
Although US officials claim the deaths were a major blow to the pro-Saddam fighters, attacks against US soldiers have continued unabated.
US soldier killed
A US soldier was killed and three others were wounded late on Friday in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack north of Baghdad, the US military said on Saturday.
"One 4th Division Infantry soldier was killed and three injured at approximately 22:30 on August 1 when their convoy came under an RPG attack south of Shumayat," a town between Balad and Tikrit around 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, a spokesperson said.
Since US President George W Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1, 53 US soldiers have been killed in guerrilla attacks, while at least 57 have died in non-combat incidents.
In a separate attack on Friday, an Iraqi woman was killed by US soldiers who had come under fire in the Mansur district of Baghdad.
The soldiers sprayed gunfire when an unknown assailant threw an explosive device at a convoy of six US military vehicles from a bridge.
Desperate to bring stability to Iraq, US troops stepped up their raids countrywide, arresting more than 700 people, in their hunt for Saddam, who, 13 years ago to the day, ordered his forces into Kuwait, leading to the 1991 Gulf War.
Digitally-altered photographs were released by the Pentagon of its public enemy number one, showing a smiling Saddam as he might look, variously, with a beard, white hair, gray hair, a trimmed mustache and an Arab headdress.
- AFP