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Mystery shrouds Saddam's fate

STAR DESK
As Baghdad came under Anglo-American control, no one knows where Saddam Hussein is, or even if he is dead or alive.
US intelligence had solid information from multiple sources that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein went inside a building and didn't leave before it was struck by an American bomber Monday, US officials told AP.
One intelligence source was believed to be an eyewitness who watched him go inside. No one would discuss the identity or characterise the credibility of the witness.
But the CIA does not know whether Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his sons were killed or whether they survived a US bombing earlier this week, a CIA official said yesterday.
More intriguing is that neither the wire agencies nor the TV channels reported what the US troops are doing to track him down.
"It is not known whether Saddam and sons were present and whether they survived the attack," the CIA official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
A B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound (900-kg) bombs on a building in the Baghdad district of Mansur on
Monday after the CIA received a tip that Saddam and his sons. Uday and Qusay, were inside meeting with Iraqi intelligence officials.
Since the strike, which demolished the building and left behind a huge crater, there has been intense speculation about whether Saddam was killed or whether he survived.
British newspapers yesterday quoted unnamed British intelligence sources as saying Saddam probably survived the airstrike.
"He was probably not in the building when it was bombed (Monday)," The Guardian quoted a source as saying.
The Times said Britain's foreign intelligence service, MI6, told CIA that it believed Saddam left the targeted building in Baghdad just before it was bombed.
"We think he left the same way he arrived in the area, either by a tunnel system or by car, we're not sure," the paper quoted a British intelligence source as saying.
US officials have repeatedly said they do not know the results of the strike and that it would probably take some time to determine the fate of the Iraqi leader.
If Saddam survived he will sur SEE PAGE 11 COL 7 FROM PAGE 1
face at some point or people close to him will talk about him as either dead or alive and that information will be picked up by Western intelligence services, US officials say.
More difficult would be finding remains in the rubble to identify, given the severity of the strike and the fact that US forces did not have control of that district immediately after the strikes, officials say.
It was the second strike that targeted Saddam and his sons, the first one bombed a residential compound on the outskirts of Baghdad on March 19.
Meanwhile, US warplanes struck Iraqi positions around Tikrit north of Baghdad, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, a senior US military spokesman said yesterday.
"Over the last 24 hours what you have are continuing airstrikes against Iraqi military targets in the area of Tikrit as well as against regime leadership targets," Navy Captain Frank Thorp said at US Central Command's forward planning base here.
Thorp said US forces "continue to move north" from the Iraqi capital and described Tikrit, 200 kilometers north of Baghdad, as "first and foremost the
next large metropolis in the country as well as recognised to be a very important city for the regime."
A senior US commander in the war on Iraq, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, on Tuesday said US forces were keeping up the pressure on Tikrit to prevent Iraqi units loyal to Sadddam Hussein from reaching the president's hometown.