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By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Monday, June 23, 2003; Page A01

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Top Iraqis Believed Targeted in U.S. Strike

Defense officials said yesterday that they were investigating whether a strike on a three-vehicle convoy fleeing Iraq near the Syrian border last Wednesday killed top officials in the government of former president Saddam Hussein, perhaps including Hussein or his sons.

The officials said that DNA tests were being carried out on the victims, and the AC-130 gunship strike by Special Operations forces had drawn high-level attention in the Pentagon. But they added that so far there was no evidence Hussein was hit. Some intelligence officials expressed doubt about whether the strike had targeted Hussein or his sons, Uday and Qusay. They are the top three on the U.S. list of most-wanted officials in Iraq.

The attack on the moving convoy took place close to the Syrian border in western Iraq, officials said. One source said the strike "chewed up something big" and added that the targets were believed to be among the top four or five Iraqis being sought. Separately, a senior defense official said there was "nothing specific" about Hussein in the intelligence that prompted the attack, "although it was tied to the leadership in some manner or another." A third U.S. official said there was very good intelligence that "one or more high-value targets" were in the convoy.

The search for Hussein gained a new impetus June 16 when U.S. forces captured his closest aide, Abid Hamid Mahmud, in a house in Tikrit, Hussein's home town. Defense officials said last week that Mahmud had told U.S. authorities that Hussein and his sons had survived the war and that the sons had escaped with Mahmud to Syria, only to be forced to return to Iraq. Officials expressed uncertainty about whether Mahmud was telling the truth, and one official said Mahmud had not provided specific information on where Hussein might be found.

There have been a number of strikes on locations where U.S. forces believed Hussein to be hiding, but there has been no evidence that he was killed. At the beginning of the war, on March 20, U.S. officials thought they had good intelligence on Hussein's whereabouts in a bunker at a military command-and-control complex, Dora Farm, which was hit with cruise missiles. In another raid April 7, U.S. bombers hit a site in a Baghdad neighborhood after receiving reports that Hussein might be there.

The Observer, a British newspaper, reported yesterday that the airstrike last week was carried out after U.S. officials intercepted a satellite telephone conversation in which either Hussein or his sons were overheard. The newspaper said the strike occurred near the border town of Qaim, site of earlier battles as some Iraqis fled toward Syria.

A Bush administration official said last night, however, that U.S. forces followed the convoy into Syrian territory and attacked it there. The Americans, the official said on condition of anonymity, were "in hot pursuit and wound up crossing the Syrian border."

The possibility that Hussein or other Iraqi leaders might have been in the targeted convoy was not reported through normal CIA channels, said another senior U.S. official, who added that intelligence officials had no knowledge of any request to match Hussein's DNA, which is in the possession of the U.S. government, with DNA found at the convoy site.

Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said U.S. forces had mounted a "very aggressive effort" to find Hussein. But Roberts said neither he nor the committee staff had been led to believe anything significant had happened during the strike on the convoy.

Senior members of the congressional intelligence committees have not been notified of the possibility that Hussein or other senior leaders are believed to have been in the convoy, according to two congressional sources.

Separately, a U.S. soldier was killed and another seriously wounded yesterday morning when a military truck was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade on a heavily traveled road near a military base south of Baghdad, according to U.S. military officials.

In a response to the escalating violence in Iraq, the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on President Bush to speak more candidly to the American people about the time commitment required to bring stability to the country.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the panel's chairman, suggested on ABC's "This Week" that the president commit to "a five-year plan of stability. . . . To leave, as we usually do, is to leave a situation which is an incubator for terrorism, and to short-circuit the whole process, and we're back where we were with al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

"It's time the president go to the American people and tell them the facts," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the ranking minority member on the committee. "And the fact is, Johnny and Jane ain't coming home any time soon."

The latest attacks came one week into Operation Desert Scorpion, an effort by U.S. forces to wipe out resistance fighters who have been attacking American soldiers since the end of the war. Deadly assaults that were only recently described as the last throes of the old regime appear increasingly coordinated and sophisticated, according to some U.S. officials.

U.S. forces have carried out numerous raids in Baghdad and to the north in the operation. At least 17 U.S. soldiers have been killed in hit-and-run attacks since Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1, with four killed in the capital in the last week. And there have also been other attacks on oil and gas facilities as well as electric stations.

Near midnight Saturday, saboteurs blew up a natural gas pipeline that runs by the town of Hit, about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad, city officials said yesterday. A large flame burned as late as sunset. No one had come to put it out, residents said.

In Baghdad, Oil Ministry officials said that sabotage damaged an oil pipeline, but Hit residents said it was gas. "Everyone around here knows that it's gas," said Ali Ibrahim, a truck driver. "If the attackers were after oil, they made a mistake."

"Someone wants to make things hard for Americans. No one can guard a whole pipeline," said Salam Hity, a police official. The line runs from Kirkuk in the far north, and the gas is distributed to power plants.

An oil pipeline near Kirkuk also exploded recently, though some officials said the blast was caused by a leak. That incident delayed yesterday's scheduled start of oil deliveries north to Turkey. Iraqi and American officials had hoped that about 200,000 barrels a day would flow by the end of the week, but repair parts are scarce, reports from Kirkuk said.

Meanwhile, two American soldiers were wounded when their Humvee hit a land mine or other explosive device in Hit, U.S. officials said. Some city residents said it was a roadside bomb and not a mine.

Hit is in the Sunni Muslim belt of central Iraq, where support for Hussein during his long reign was most solid.

Residents in Khan Azad, where the U.S. soldier was killed yesterday, also claimed that a roadside bomb triggered by a wire, not a grenade, hit an American truck.

"The Americans and some Iraqis were examining a wire," said Emad Khadhum, who has a roadside grocery stand near the site of the explosion. "It sounded like dynamite, a bomb. And houses near the road were hit."

Staff writers Vernon Loeb, Dana Priest and Peter Slevin in Washington, correspondents Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Amman, Jordan, and Peter Finn and Daniel Williams in Khan Azad, Iraq, contributed to this report.

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