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Lt-Gen Ricardo Sanchez said at
a news conference in Baghdad. "They died in a fierce gunbattle," he
said. Sanchez said US military forces swept into action, raiding the
mansion in the al-Falah neighborhood in the north of Mosul on Tuesday after
receiving a tip from a resident in the city the previous night.
The commander said Saddam's sons barricaded themselves inside and put up fierce resistance.
A witness said helicopters armed with missiles then attacked the house. "The bodies were in such a condition where you could identify them," he said. The identities of the other two dead were not known, he said, promising a detailed briefing on the operation Wednesday.
Sanchez was asked about heavy gunfire that erupted across Baghdad about 10 pm, believed to have been in celebration of reports that Saddam's sons had been killed in Mosul. The general said the gunfire may have been in celebration over the son's death or hostile fire aimed at US occupation forces. "It's very appropriate that they would be celebrating about now," he said.
In Washington, L Paul Bremer, Iraq's top civilian administrator, said he did not want to comment on how the deaths of Saddam's sons would affect security in Iraq. However, Bremer added: "It certainly is good news for the Iraqi people."
The house owner, Nawaf al-Zaidan "is believed to have informed US forces that Uday and Qusay, Qusay's son, and a bodyguard named Abdul Samad took refuge in his house and he wanted to get rid of them," said a female relative of Zaidan who asked not to be named.
The relative and other residents of the area said US helicopters fired at the house after clashes broke out when US forces tried to go in to arrest those inside. Four charred bodies, believed to include those of Qusay, the "ace of clubs" on the US "most wanted list" of the former Iraqi regime, and Uday, the "ace of hearts", were taken out of the house, relatives of Zaidan said. The official said members of the 101st Airborne Division carried out the raid.
A Kurdish official also told AFP that US officers on the ground said Uday and Qusay were among those killed in the operation that lasted several hours. The area remained cordoned off on Tuesday evening. Mosul deputy governor Khasrow Guran later told AFP that US forces were now trying to identify the four charred bodies. Two of the dead were bearded, he said, adding that US forces believed Uday and Qusay were among four people killed when the house was bombed.
Sadi Ahmad Pire, the top official in Mosul for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), also said the PUK official in the locality where the raid took place had told him US forces on the ground believed Uday and Qusay had been killed along with an undetermined number of other people.
In Washington, Secretary of Defence Donald H Rumsfeld briefed President George W Bush about the raid in an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday morning. "I am aware of the reports," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "I am not in a position to confirm anything." A US unnamed intelligence official told AFP earlier that officials "can't rule it out."
CNN television quoted an unnamed US official as saying that the government was reasonably certain that Uday and Qusay Hussein had "met their maker". Another US official said the two bodies bore a "strong resemblance" to Uday and Qusay. "There is optimism within the ranks (that Uday and Qusay were killed)," said the official in Washington, but added that the bodies were not in the best condition for identification.
US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said the attackers used rocket-propelled grenades and small arms in the assault staged along the road between Balad, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, and Ramadi, 100 kilometres west of the capital. It gave no other details.
Hours ahead of the deadly attack in Mosul, attention had shifted on Tuesday to the United Nations, where members of Iraq's 25-strong Governing Council were seeking to win credibility and aid for rebuilding.
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