The U.S. military released pictures Thursday showing the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the sons of Saddam Hussein, two days after they were killed in a fierce firefight in a villa in the northern city of Mosul.
The US occupation forces has said the brothers and a third man, believed to have been a bodyguard, were killed by TOW missiles fired into the villa where they were hiding out Tuesday.
The military released two pictures each of the brothers who were betrayed by an Iraqi, reportedly a Saddam cousin who owned the villa where they were hiding.
The release of the photographs was a move by the military to "convince" skeptical Iraqis that the brothers were dead. Many Iraqis, especially Saddam supporters, believed the story of the brothers' killing was concocted by the American military to demoralize opponents of their occupation of the country.
The U.S. government released the photographs on CD-ROM through the provisional authority in Baghdad. It should be noted that the Bush administration complained loudly when images of American dead were broadcast on Arab television networks during the war with Iraq.
The CD also includes X-rays said to show wounds Uday Hussein suffered in a 1996 assassination attempt. Those X-rays helped U.S. forces confirm his identity, according to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq.
Earlier, members of Iraq's new Governing Council were shown the bodies of the men. A doctor on the council who saw the corpses said he was sure they were their bodies.
Uday's face had a wound that destroyed part of his nose and upper lip. There are suggestions Uday may have killed himself. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
