The United States does not know if Saddam Hussein survived a bombing attack, senior US administration officials admitted today.
"He's not been around. He's not active. Therefore, he's dead, or he's incapacitated or he's healthy and he's cowering in some tunnel someplace trying to avoid being caught," US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said.
|
The White House said it was also not sure whether Saddam was alive but spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer warned he had "missed his chance" to go peacefully into exile. An official close to US intelligence also said Saddam's fate was unknown.
Iraqi opposition leader Mr Ahmad Chalabi told CNN he had reports that Saddam and at least one of his sons, Qusay or Uday, had survived an air attack on Monday on a Baghdad building where they were believed to be meeting."We have no evidence that they have been killed in that attack," Mr Chalabi said from Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.
The Timesof London said that MI6 had told CIA that it believed Saddam had left the building before the attack.
Nine people are reported to have died in the strike after a B-1 bomber dropped four satellite-guided bombs just 12 minutes after the crew received the order to attack.
Two of the bombs were 2,000lb (900 kilogram) earth-penetrating "bunker-busters" and the other two were delayed-fuse bombs of the same size.
Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said he could not rule out the possibility that Saddam had escaped through an underground channel. But asked whether the Iraqi leader may have fled to his home city of Tikrit, 90 miles north of the capital, he said: "I don't know how he could get to Tikrit, when we have forces that surround it."
Lt Col Lapan said US troops have not yet begun excavations on the bombing site, nor have they begun DNA tests on the remains of those killed there.
The Washington Timesreported that multiple US intelligence sources saw Saddam enter a building in Baghdad on Monday and not emerge before US bombs destroyed it. Citing unnamed government officials, the newspaper said that some analysts believe eyewitness accounts suggesting that the Iraqi dictator is dead.
One of the officials described the CIA as being "in a state of euphoria," the report said.
AFP AFP