As recently as two days before his capture, Saddam Hussein dined with a top lieutenant who was co-ordinating guerilla attacks on the so-called Highway of Death from Baghdad north to Tikrit. He also gave him more than $US1 million ($1.35 million) to finance the attacks, a US military commander said. The deputy, Qais Hattam, was arrested at a farmhouse south of Tikrit early on Tuesday with 73 suspected Saddam Fedayeen guerillas, a huge cache of explosives and paperwork accounting for $US1.9 million to finance attacks, said Colonel Nate Sassaman, who led the raid.
Raids against suspected guerillas are continuing. US forces sealed all roads into the city of Samarra early on Wednesday and arrested about 30 suspects. The show of force, the biggest since the US-led occupation began in April, signalled an escalation in the anti-insurgent campaign and reflected a growing sense that the military has to change tactics if it is to counter increasingly well-planned attacks in Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland.
| I dunno that they're changing tactics. I'd think they're alternating them... |
Hattam, believed to be Saddam’s top lieutenant for guerilla operations north of Baghdad, has been on the military’s wanted list for months. An Iraqi informant came to a US base just hours after Saddam’s arrest was reported in Iraq and said that Hattam was meeting regional Fedayeen militia commanders. It is unclear how much control Saddam had over the guerilla campaign centred on Samarra, where at least 54 Iraqis were killed in a gun battle this month and insurgents mounted a sophisticated two-stage ambush against a US patrol on Monday, two days after Saddam’s arrest. There was civilian outrage in Samarra over the troops’ strong-arm search tactics. The US said it would pay restitution for any property damage.
Officials would not say whether financial documents found in Saddam’s hideout directly linked him to Hattam or other guerilla money men. However, in the northern city of Mosul, Major-General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said documents found with Saddam confirmed that he had had contact with several suspected Iraqi insurgents long sought by US forces in north-western Iraq.
EFL. More info on the inexplicable meeting we raided the other day. Sounds like we made quite a haul. |