Gruesome pics prove sons' death

2003-07-24 17:40

Baghdad - The US-backed coalition provisional authority in Iraq has released photographs on Thursday of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, hoping to convince skeptical Iraqis that the men were killed in a raid by US troops, CNN reported.

Sky News reported that there were suggestions that Uday may have committed suicide instead of being taken alive.

The pictures, taken after the brothers died in a firefight with US troops Tuesday, have been shown to reporters, off camera. The images are described as gruesome.

Uday Hussein's body

The US government intentionally released the photographs through the provisional authority in Baghdad because the US military has traditionally been reluctant to release images of slain combatants. The Bush administration complained loudly when images of American dead were broadcast on Arab television networks during the war with Iraq.

Adnan Pachachi, a former foreign minister who now sits on the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council, said on Thursday that their deaths "will hasten the end of the acts of violence that have been perpetuated recently".

"The death of Qusay and Uday has been welcomed by the Iraqi people, because they were a symbol of all the oppression imposed on the people of Iraq for decades," Pachachi said at a news conference in London.

Qusay Hussein's body

According to a Pentagon official who saw them, the photos are "head shots" that show the men apparently tried to alter their appearances by growing facial hair.

Sceptical

Many Iraqis are sceptical about the deaths of the brothers, who were feared nationwide as ruthless killers and protectors of their father's dictatorship.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey said in an interview with CNN that releasing the photographs is necessary. "Normally, we would not do this," he said. "But I think it's necessary for the world to see and particularly for the Iraqis to see that these two are, in fact, dead, that this is not some ginned-up story from the United States."

"We've got to put up with a lot of lying about what has happened and what we're doing," Woolsey said. "And I think, under those circumstances, the pictures are going to be necessary."

A picture of Uday Hussein shows he had a shaved head and a bushy beard. Aside from the wound, he appeared relatively unscarred, Pentagon officials said.

Qusay's picture showed he had less of a beard and appeared badly bruised and scarred, a Pentagon official said.

Another Pentagon official said one photograph shows what could be an exit wound on the back of Uday Hussein's head, but the official dismissed as "pure speculation" reports that the wound could have been self-inflicted.

Autopsies

Autopsies will be performed and the bodies could be re-photographed after they have been cleaned up, a Pentagon official said.

Dental records, X-rays, and visual identifications from four senior members of Saddam's former regime who are in US custody confirmed the identities of the brothers, according to Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US troops on the ground in Iraq.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that killing Saddam's sons was not a choice made by the United States.

"The task of the commanders on the ground is to do their job, and their job has been, without any ambiguity at all, to seek out, find and capture or kill the senior leadership from Iraq," Rumsfeld said Wednesday.

"If a person is determined to fight to the death, then they may very well have that opportunity," he said. "It was not a choice that the United States or the coalition made, it was a choice that the people inside that building made."

The director of the US-led reconstruction effort in Iraq, L Paul Bremer, said it was clear that the brothers did not want to be taken alive.

During a visit to Washington on Wednesday, Bremer was asked if US troops had attempted first to capture the Hussein brothers, who presumably may have had valuable information.

Bremer, who was in Washington at the time of the raid, said: "We went to the door of the house, were refused entry and were fired upon, but with increasingly heavier weapons. And we had to respond and these people were found inside of a very heavily armored room. There was no way they were going to be taken alive."

President Bush called the deaths of Saddam's sons a sign that the former regime is gone and "will not be coming back."

Battle in Mosul

In this US Army photo, soldiers fire a TOW missile during the Mosul assault.

In a Wednesday news conference, Sanchez detailed the operation that killed the brothers, an assault that started with a gunbattle on the stairs of a house in Mosul, northern Iraq, and ended with the firing of about 10 anti-tank missiles.

The general said the US Army's 101st Airborne Division and Special Operations Forces played a role in the attack.

Iraqi police had a role in setting up a cordon around the area of the house in which Saddam's sons were said to be hiding, Sanchez said.

Army .50-caliber machine guns and 10 Humvee-mounted TOW missiles were used in the assault and Sanchez said it's believed the missiles probably killed the brothers.

- News24