A U.S. Air Force warplane dropped four enormous bombs Monday on a residential complex where âextremely reliableâ intelligence indicated that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and one or both of his sons were attending a meeting, senior administration officials told NBC News. The sources would not rule out the possibility that Saddam could have moved before the bomber struck, but they said it was likely that he and his sons were dead.
BASED ON information from an intelligence source on the ground in Baghdad, U.S. military officials were confident that Saddam and his son Qusay were attending a meeting in the neighborhood with other top Iraqi leaders, senior officials told NBCâs Carl Rochelle at the Pentagon and Andrea Mitchell at the State Department. They said they believed it was possible that Saddamâs other son, Uday, also was there. The intelligence information was considered so reliable that it justified a massive attack in a residential area of the al-Mansour district of western Baghdad despite the administrationâs declared emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, diplomatic and military sources said.
Officials quickly called in an Air Force B-1B bomber to strike the location. At 2 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), the warplane dropped four GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition weapons, the 2,000-pound smart bombs known as âbunker busters,â leaving giant holes in the ground, the officials said. Diplomatic officials and officials at the Pentagon told NBC News that they were highly confident that they killed most of the people at the meeting, but they said it could take a day or two before they knew for sure. The airstrike was confirmed by senior administration officials at the White House and military officials at U.S. Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The officials would not comment on the possible effect of the airstrike, but officials in Qatar said that the atmosphere at Central Command was one of âconfidenceâ and that more information could be released in the coming hours.
Senior U.S. officials have told NBC News that Saddamâs likely successor, assuming Qusay Hussein was not available to take command, would be Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. The sources said Ibrahim was believed to be in Mosul in northern Iraq in recent weeks, not in Baghdad.
The air raid in al-Mansour, a stronghold of Saddamâs Baath Party, blasted a 60-foot-deep crater, ripped orange trees from their roots and left behind a heap of concrete, mangled iron rods and shredded furniture and clothes. Witnesses said nine Iraqis were killed. If Saddam was among them, U.S. military planners would have achieved one of their prime objectives in the war. It would cap a dramatic day in which U.S. forces established a foothold in one of Saddamâs palaces in Baghdad after swooping into the city the day before and moving to cut off escape routes from the capital. |