Iraq: US forces, acting on a tip from an informant, have arrested several men believed to be part of the personal security detachment of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during a raid south of Tikrit.
"I believe that we continue to tighten the noose," Maj Gen Ray Odierno, commander of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, said yesterday at the Pentagon during a teleconference from Tikrit.
"I believe that we continue to gain more and more information about where he might be."
US forces, also acting on information from an informant, killed Saddam's two sons during a raid on Tuesday in Mosul.
Gen Odierno said an informant came forward to members of a US army brigade in Tikrit, Saddam's home town, and volunteered information that led to a raid on Thursday night on a house south of the city.
He said US forces detained 13 people, adding that "somewhere between five and 10 of those, we're still sorting through it, are believed to be Saddam Hussein's personal security detachment".
Gen Odierno said the captives were being interrogated. He could not say how recently they had been with Saddam and gave no indication that finding the former president might be imminent.
US officials have said they believe Saddam is hiding somewhere inside Iraq and that they are confident they will find him.
Gen Odierno said that US forces trying to get information on the former president recently spoke to "one of his wives" in the area, but he did not identify her.
Gen Odierno commands US forces in a large zone which starts just north of Baghdad, stretches to the oil fields north of Kirkuk and to the Iranian border.
He reported an increase in tips from informants since the United States on Thursday released pictures of the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the once-powerful sons of the deposed Iraqi leader.
Another tip received on Thursday, he said, led to the discovery of a large cache of firearms and explosives buried underground near a house south-east of Samarra.
US troops dug up a container there which contained 45,000 sticks of dynamite, 11 improvised bombs, 34 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 150 RPG rounds, more than three dozen machine-guns and sub-machin-guns and bomb-detonation cord, Gen Odierno said.
He said arms from this cache may have been used to stage some of the attacks on US troops around Samarra.
Gen Odierno said attacks against US forces in his region had dropped by about 50 per cent over the past month, but some of the attacks now being mounted were becoming more sophisticated. - (Reuters)