“All of a sudden we heard all these gunshots going off. I thought it was really cool that we finally got him.”Ĭhaplain (Maj.) Pete Lambert, a Catholic chaplain, was in the middle of Mass with 20 people when he heard the gunfire. Then someone else came in and told us that we may have caught Saddam. “And then I woke up and heard the giant voice tell us to put on the flak vest and helmet. “I thought, ‘Here comes an alarm red,’” she said. Senior Airman Heather Gondek, of the 506th Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron, woke up when she heard the celebratory gunfire, but said she thought it was just another firefight. However, this would turn out to be anything but an ordinary occurrence. 14 when rumors began floating that Saddam Hussein, the ace of spades in the “55 Most Wanted” deck of cards, might have been captured.įor most people, the sound of gunfire outside the perimeter gate was nothing out of the ordinary, as small-arms fire happens here on a regular basis. KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) - There was cautious enthusiasm here the afternoon of Dec. 506th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs.forces in Iraq were being conducted by 'enemies of Iraq's people' and he vowed that they would be 'hunted' and 'defeated.'ĪBCNEWS' Martha Raddatz and Brian Hartman in Washington, Jeffrey Kofman in Baghdad and Jim Sciutto in Mosul contributed to this report. Richard Myers, Bush said holdouts of resistance against U.S. official in Iraq, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. In an upbeat progress report on the military operations in Iraq delivered from the White House Rose Garden, Bush said the 'careers of two of the regime's chief henchmen came to an end' on Tuesday.įlanked by Paul Bremer, the ranking U.S. On Wednesday, Bush sent the message that the death of Saddam's sons was a sign that the 'former regime has gone and will not be coming back.' Reporting from Mosul, ABCNEWS' Jim Sciutto said intelligence gathered from the villa had been sent south to Baghdad for further examination amid renewed hopes that the noose was tightening around Saddam himself. Photos of the destroyed villa taken by the Arab satellite television station al Jazeera show what appears to be a computer monitor and keyboard along with scattered papers. troops and intelligence experts have been searching it for signs of Saddam's whereabouts. The firefight on Tuesday that left the brothers and two others dead gutted the fortified villa in northern Iraq where the men were hiding out.Īlthough bullets and missiles left gaping holes in the building's facade and destroyed the interior, U.S. 'The killing of Odai and Qusai will be avenged.' 'We pledge to you Iraqi people that we will continue in the jihad against the infidels,' he said in a room adorned with portraits of Saddam.

occupation.īut in a tape aired on Arab satellite channel Al Arabiya today, a masked man, claiming to be a member of the Fedayeen Saddam, a ragtag, notoriously violent paramilitary group formerly led by Odai, promised to avenge the deaths of Saddam's sons. Although there was no proof that Odai or Qusai Hussein were directing earlier attacks, officials believed their deaths would provide a strong signal to loyalists and other militias resisting the U.S. troops would abate after the deaths of Saddam's sons. officials had hoped guerrilla attacks against U.S. troops killed since Saddam's sons died in a massive operation involving the 101st Airborne Division, elements of the Air Force, Special Forces and the Iraqi police force. Their deaths bring to five the number of U.S. soldiers from a military unit involved in the attack on Odai and Qusai were killed when their convoy came under attack near Mosul today. The release of the photographs came hours after three U.S.

Pictures of saddam hussein capture