|
A key Iraqi opposition leader said Wednesday that he has information that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein survived an earlier air strike in Baghdad and escaped from the capital with at least one of his sons.
In an interview with CNN from Nasiriya, Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, leader of Iraqi National Congress, said unconfirmed reports indicated that the Iraqi president had taken refuge in the city of Baqubah, northeast of the Iraqi capital.
"We have no evidence they have been killed in that attack. We know at least that Qusay, his son, has survived and he is occupying some houses in the Diyala area," Chalabi said.
The same reports also indicated that Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majeed,nicknamed "Chemical Ali", was wounded but alive and in the same area with Saddam.
A US B-1 bomber on Monday night dropped four specially designed2,000-pound bombs on a building in a Baghdad residential neighborhood suspected to contain Iraqi leaders, including Saddam and his tow sons.
However, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press briefing that he did not know whether Saddam was dead or alive.
"He's either dead, or he's incapacitated, or he's healthy and cowering in some tunnel someplace trying to avoid being caught," Rumsfeld said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 9, 2003)
|
