BAGHDAD, 4 August 2003 — US troops trawled Iraq for Saddam Hussein yesterday as two Iraqis were caught in the lethal cross fire of the coalition’s war on guerilla insurgents.
A 75-year-old farmer was shot dead and his son wounded yesterday after being turned back at a coalition checkpoint west of Fallujah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad, the farmer’s family said.
As they prepared to turn around, they came under fire from the checkpoint. The father died on the spot while his son was hit in the jaw and left hand.
The US Army had no immediate comment on the incident. A car was in flames yesterday morning on the main highway to the Baghdad airport, a road where US troops regularly come under attack, but this time an Iraqi was hit, rather than an American.
The vehicle was hit by “a small explosive device or a rocket-propelled grenade” at 8:30 a.m. (0430 GMT), said Sgt. Brent William, a public affairs officer.
The driver, who managed to escape the car, was wounded in the blast, which happened at the same spot where a US soldier and three others were wounded in a land mine attack three days before.
In recent weeks, troops have bulldozed thick underbrush lining the highway in an effort to prevent ambushes around the airport, one of the main US military bases in Iraq.
US soldiers were hit in an ambush outside of Baqubah, 60 kilometers (36 miles) north of Baghdad yesterday afternoon.
Two soldiers were wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade smashed into a Humvee all-terrain vehicle, witnesses said, adding that US troops had cordoned off the motorway. The US military had no immediate confirmation. Despite the violence, US soldiers arrested 202 individuals, including two middle-ranking officials of the ousted Baath Party, in the last 24 hours, a military spokesman said in Baghdad.
The officials, who were not identified, had been recruiting insurgents and planning attacks against US soldiers.
Meanwhile, tempers flared in Saddam’s home village of Awja where his sons, Uday and Qusay, and the latter’s 14-year-old son Mustapha were buried Saturday. Two national flags covering the earthen graves of the two men, who sparked fear in the hearts of Iraqis, were stolen early yesterday under the noses of US soldiers guarding the cemetery.
Residents of Saddam’s birthplace complained about the presence of US soldiers and said they would not visit the burial site as long as the foreign troops guarded the cemetery, which the coalition fears could become a rallying point for Saddam loyalists.
A Monday memorial service had been advertised all over Tikrit, but Saddam’s family backed down, in what may have been a condition imposed by the Americans for Uday, Qusay and Mustapha, to be buried Saturday in Awja.
