US forces, acting on atip from an informant, have arrested several men believed to bepart of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's personalsecurity detachment during a raid south of Tikrit, a seniorUS military commander said today.
"I believe that we continue to tighten the noose," Maj.Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the US Army's 4th InfantryDivision, told reporters at the Pentagon during ateleconference from Tikrit.
"I believe that we continue to gainmore and more information about where he might be," he added.
Earlier US forces arrested 16 men in a pre-dawn raid north of Baghdad today.
Those arrested include two suspected of being behind a bomb and gun ambush that killed a US soldier and Iraqi interpreter in the capital.
The soldier and interpreter were killed when an improvised bomb went off and they were shot at on a highway in Baghdad on Monday.
Over 100 camouflaged soldiers came under fire after they surrounded a complex of homes where the men and their families were spending the night.
They captured the men as they tried to flee and forced them to lie or sit on the ground with their hands bound behind their backs in plastic handcuffs. They later took them away in a truck.