American forces on the trail of Saddam Hussein narrowly missed capturing his top security man Sunday and possibly the deposed leader himself in raids in several locales, U.S. commanders said.
“Is the noose tightening around him? Absolutely,” said Col. James Hickey, the commander in Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown.
The intensifying hunt for Hussein in the villages around Tikrit and in Baghdad came as a U.S. Marine was killed in a grenade attack south of the Iraqi capital. It was the fifth American death in three days and the 49th since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1.
Hussein was believed to be moving Sunday every two to four hours, according to U.S. military sources, and probably is not involved in directing the attacks on U.S. soldiers that the Pentagon blames largely on his supporters.
“He’s trying so hard to save his own skin that he’s not able to communicate effectively,” Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said upon arriving in Baghdad from Tikrit, where he visited soldiers and 4th Infantry Division commanders.
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Late Sunday afternoon, the elite U.S. squad known as Task Force 20 that is hunting Hussein stormed a villa in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour neighborhood after receiving information that Hussein was there, witnesses said.
At least three Iraqis, and possibly five, reportedly were killed when the Americans opened fire on a driver who refused their orders to stop, Iraqi police said. Four other cars were hit by gunfire and the Iraqi dead included a teenage boy, pan-Arab television reported.
The owner of the house, tribal leader and Hussein confidant Prince Rabiah Muhammed al-Habib, told reporters that U.S. soldiers blew out the front door with dynamite and then ransacked his villa.
“I was told they had been tipped off that Saddam was hiding in my house, that he was in fact my guest,” al-Habib said. “But I know nothing about this.”
Al-Habib was not home at the time of the raid and said he had not seen Hussein in months.
By 9 p.m., neighbors said, soldiers left the neighborhood after apparently finding no trace of Hussein in what once was a favorite area for him. U.S. bombs fell on one street in the Mansour district in April after Americans were tipped that Hussein was hiding there.
Angry residents said that in Sunday’s raid U.S. soldiers used overwhelming force and were firing randomly. None of the dead was linked to al-Habib or his house, neighbors said.
The U.S. military declined to comment on the incident, saying it was an ongoing operation.
U.S. sifts hundreds of tips
Earlier Sunday, acting on one of hundreds of tips that have surfaced since the deaths Tuesday of Hussein’s sons in Mosul, U.S. forces raided three farmhouses in the region where Hussein was born and reared. No shots were fired, and 25 men initially detained were released later .
Some villagers told U.S. forces that Hussein’s security chief fled before the raids.
“We missed him by 24 hours,” said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, who directed the operations.
Senior U.S. military sources said Hussein apparently was in the area too.
“He’s got tribes he can fall back on,” Hickey said. “There’s always indicators he could be around here.”
Hussein has long made a practice of sleeping in different locations nightly. But with a $25 million bounty offered for him, his sons Udai and Qusai killed in a U.S. raid and dozens of tips as to his whereabouts, Hussein and his cronies are in a vise, officials said.
“They’re running out of places to hide, and it’s becoming difficult for them to move because we’re everywhere,” Hickey said. “Any day now we’re going to knock on their door, or kick in their door, and they know it.”
From Baghdad to Mosul, tips are flooding in to U.S. bases and soldiers.
“There’s been a big spike in the numbers coming forward, providing evidence of weapons caches and of where people are,” Myers said.
In recent days, U.S. forces have uncovered large storehouses of missiles, guns, grenades and even 45,000 sticks of TNT in one location, U.S. commanders said.
“In the last week alone we’ve picked up 660 surface-to-air missiles,” U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “That’s a product of the increased intelligence the Iraqi people are providing.”
Increasingly, U.S. commanders are worried about guerrilla fighters coming into Iraq to target Americans.
“This is what I would call a terrorist magnet, where America, being present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity, if you will,” Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition ground forces, said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
U.S. efforts to quell violence have prompted protests from angry Iraqis.
In the holy city of Karbala in central Iraq, hundreds of protesters gathered Sunday near the Imam al-Hussein Shrine, Iraq’s second-most-revered place for Shiite Muslims, to complain about the alleged shooting of a 51-year-old restaurant employee by U.S. troops Saturday night.
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After protesters threw rocks, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police fired and wounded nine Iraqis, witnesses said. The soldiers and police attempted to enter the shrine but were blocked by a crowd that included the alleged shooting victim.
Protesters vow revenge
“We will take revenge for this!” protesters yelled. “We will make life miserable for the Americans.”
An official of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, meanwhile, said Iraq’s Governing Council is to meet Monday. The Americans hope the governing body will adopt rules for electing a president and establishing a committee to write a constitution, the U.S. official told The Associated Press.