The US/Iraq: An underground bunker in Baghdad which the US targeted on the first night of the Iraq war to eradicate Saddam Hussein never existed, a US television network reported yesterday.
US aircraft hit the Dora Farms complex in Baghdad with bombs and cruise missiles on March 20th but teams which searched the site since the fall of Saddam's regime on April 9th have found no trace of the bunker or any bodies, CBS news reported.
"When we came out here the primary thing they were looking for was an underground facility or bodies, forensics," CBS quoted Col Tim Madere, the head of the search operation, as saying.
"And basically what they saw were giant holes. No underground facilities, no bodies." CBS reported that every structure in the compound was destroyed, except the main palace hidden behind a wall.
The US Air Force dropped four 2,000-lb bombs on the site because intelligence said there was a bunker complex hidden beneath the buildings. But Col Madere has yet to find it.
The compound has been searched three times, once by the CIA and twice by Col Madere, who is trying to find traces of Saddam's DNA to see if he has been killed. After the raid, US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld insisted the strike had been "successful".
Meanwhile, a UK defence minister admitted yesterday British forces used cluster bombs in built-up areas around Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
Cluster weapons scatter scores of "bomblets" over a wide area. Some fail to detonate, leaving hazards which critics say are similar to anti-personnel mines that are banned by Britain.
But Mr Adam Ingram, the British armed forces minister, insisted : "Cluster bombs are not illegal. They are effective weapons . . . used to take out the threat to our troops."
According to the Ministry of Defence, the British fired more than 2,000 cluster munitions around Basra, while at least 66 BL755 cluster bombs were dropped by British war planes.