Active Unit News

U.S. Troops Hunting Saddam Seize Suspects, Weapons
1 hour, 25 minutes ago
By Alastair Macdonald
TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers in Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown said on Wednesday they had arrested 18 of his supporters and seized a big arms cache as they kept up the hunt for Iraq (news - web sites)'s elusive former dictator.
A military spokeswoman gave few details of the latest Army sweep near Balad, in Saddam's Sunni Muslim heartland between Tikrit and Baghdad, other than to say it found weapons.
But the wording of a terse statement suggested it may have involved special forces who are hunting Saddam's inner circle.
"Our 3rd Brigade Combat Team conducted joint patrols with Coalition forces in the vicinity of Balad," Major Josslyn Aberle told reporters in Tikrit. "They were going after certain targets." She declined to say whether the targets were seized.
Commanders in the 4th Infantry say they are operating on the assumption Saddam may be in the area.
But he has evaded capture despite a $25 million price on his head. A series of audiotapes purportedly by Saddam has urged Iraqis to fight a holy war to drive out occupying troops.
Across the broad swathe of north-central Iraq controlled from the 4th Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit, seven raids in a day netted 18 suspected Saddam loyalists and a big arms cache that included two six-meter (yard) long missiles and hundreds of shells and mortar bombs, Aberle said.
COMBATING GUERRILLAS
Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell, commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment which is spearheading the hunt for anti-U.S. fighters around Tikrit, said one patrol fired on a man around 2:30 a.m. (2230 GMT Tuesday) who seemed to be preparing to fire a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).
He said it was unclear if the incident was connected to attacks on Tuesday in which several grenades were fired at the U.S. headquarters in Saddam's former palace compound and at another site in Tikrit, or with a land mine blast north of town that killed an American civilian working on military contracts.
The contractor was the first American civilian to be killed in a guerrilla campaign that has claimed the lives of 53 U.S. soldiers since Washington declared major combat over on May 1.
Aberle said that across the division's area, attacks had fallen by about half in the past couple of months, despite worries elsewhere in Iraq that the guerrillas are getting more sophisticated and that foreign fighters are now becoming active.
Holding a black, Iraqi-made grenade launcher, Russell described the overnight incident: "Our soldiers saw a man armed with an RPG...He was sneaking through an alleyway...He actually had the RPG loaded...My guys, they just opened up."
It was not clear whether the attacker was killed as, by the time reinforcements arrived to check, there was no sign of him.
Aberle said another unit of the 4th Infantry had killed a man who tried to fire a gun at a U.S. patrol in Samarra.
Russell said his battalion had killed eight or nine fighters in the past three weeks, wounded four and captured a dozen. He said many of those involved in attacking U.S. forces were men from families closely tied to Saddam's clique.
On Tuesday, he said, Iraqi police detained a brother of Adnan Abdullah Abid al-Musslit, a Saddam family bodyguard who was arrested near Tikrit a week ago. They were still hunting other brothers.

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