ANOTHER CAPTURE
AP reports,
U.S. soldiers captured one of Saddam Hussein (news – web sites)’s former bodyguards and an Iraqi general who was a senior Baath Party official in a series of raids Tuesday on the outskirts of Tikrit, the dictator’s hometown, the U.S. military said.
total of 14 men were detained in the three-hour operation in a southern suburb of Tikrit. All the men were members of the same family, which served as a pillar of support for Saddam’s regime, said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of the 22nd Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion. He declined to name the detainees or specify the location of the raid.
“We were targeting a specific family — one of the four controlling families of the former regime,” Russell said.
“They were trying to support the remnants of the former regime by organizing attacks, through funding and by trying to hide former regime members,” Russell added.
