Iraq: Saddam Hussein's teenage grandson Mustapha may have been the last person standing after US troops launched a missile barrage on a house where he had holed up with his father and uncle.
Three adults dead around him, the soldiers said he fired on them as they ran into the ruins. They shot him dead.
Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez yesterday described the massive fire-power from land and air that killed Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay and two others, as yet unidentified, after Tuesday's siege in the city of Mosul.
Automatic gunfire from a barricaded upper-storey room had wounded four soldiers when they first tried to detain the men.
A barrage of 10 anti-tank missiles is likely to have killed the adults in the house, he told a news conference.
"We believe that it is likely that the Tow missile attack was what wound up killing three of the adults," said Lieut Gen Sanchez, land forces commander in Iraq.
But when troops burst up the staircase, they came under fire again. "They killed the remaining individual," he added. That person is thought to have been Mustapha, the teenager.
Around 200 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division pounded the house with grenades, rocket-firing Kiowa attack helicopters and Humvees mounted with heavy .50 calibre machineguns and the anti-tank missiles on Tuesday. On standby were A-10 Warthog tankbuster aircraft, Apache attack helicopters and a psy-ops team but they were not used.
The proximity of neighbouring houses was a factor in not using heavier weaponry.
Lieut Gen Sanchez said the raid, initiated after a tip from an Iraqi "walk-in source" who will probably get the two $15 million rewards offered for information on Saddam's sons, started with shouts over a bullhorn to surrender.
"We did not get a response," said Lieut Gen Sanchez.
When soldiers entered the house, they came under rifle fire from the men, who had barricaded themselves in a fortified upstairs section of the villa. Four soldiers were hurt early on - three on the staircase and one outside the house.
US forces then called in more fire-power. They tried later to enter the house a second time but again came under fire and withdrew.
"We began to employ Humvee-mounted Tow missiles," Lieut Gen Sanchez said. "We fired 10 Tow missiles into the house."
The concrete mansion, home to a businessman, Nawaf al-Zeidane, who neighbours said may have been the informer, was left a shattered ruin.
When they entered the house a third time, only one person was left alive to shoot at US soldiers, who killed him.
After the bodies were removed, accurate identification came from dental records as well as by X-rays and viewing by four former Saddam aides.
Qusay's body provided a 100 percent match with dental records and his brother Uday's a 90 per cent match, due to damage to the teeth. X-ray records of Uday's injuries in a 1996 assassination attempt also bolstered the conclusion.
Among four acquaintances who identified the two bodies was Saddam's presidential secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, the most senior aide in US custody, Lieut Gen Sanchez said. "We have no doubt that we have the bodies of Uday and Qusay," he said, adding that autopsies would be carried on the bodies, which had been removed to a US military base in Baghdad. - (Reuters)