Commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Major General Raymond Odierno, said the dictator was “caught like a rat.” One of the Iraqi translators is said to have instantly recognised the voice of Saddam Hussein coming up from it.Īnother account claims a soldier happened upon the hole by accident, and was preparing to throw a grenade down the shaft when Hussein appeared.Įither way, at the bottom of what was coined a “spider hole”, Hussein was found hiding in a primitive bunker. Beneath it, a polystyrene plug sealed the entrance to a small hole in the ground. One account suggests an interrogation of the farm’s owner directed them towards a dirty rug on the ground outside. Putin cancels annual conference for first time in 17 years įrance asks electricity exports to UK are cut as energy crisis deepens Snow, strikes, and sinking temperatures - 5 of the UK's worst winters Three boys aged 11, 10 and 8 dead after plunging into frozen lake However, as helicopters approached to extract them, the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division decided to investigate a nearby farmhouse. On December 13, 2003, two sites in the town of ad-Dawr – nicknamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2 after the heroes of the action film – were searched but to no avail. Mohammed Ibrahim al-Muslit revealed the despot was hiding not far from his ancestral home city of Tikrit. Hundreds of interrogations were carried out, until US forces got hold of a close associate of Saddam’s willing to cooperate. The mission, dubbed Operation Red Dawn after the 1984 action movie starring Patrick Swayze, took nine months to achieve its objective. An enormous search effort ensued involving tens of thousands of US troops, including the specially created Task Force 121 unit. He was designated a “High Value Target Number One” – at the top of a list of his regime’s 55 most-wanted members. READ MORE: August 24 - On this day: 32 years since Saddam Hussein's TV stunt Hussein himself, however, was nowhere to be found. In a “shock and awe” campaign, Iraqi forces were overrun within weeks and the government fell. In March 2003, the US – alongside the UK, Australia and Poland – invaded Iraq with the stated aim of taking Hussein's nuclear weapons. Bush famously naming Iraq as part of an “axis of evil”. ![]() However, in the wake of 9/11 the US stance towards the dictator hardened, with then-president George W. ![]() Hussein's regime endured UN economic sanctions and airstrikes throughout the Nineties. After refusing to withdraw by the UN-mandated deadline, an international coalition spearheaded by the US ousted the despot from the country in what became known as the Gulf War. The Iraqi Republican Guard then annexed the small nation of Kuwait to its south in August 1990. In September 1980, Hussein's forces invaded neighbouring Iran to its east, starting an eight-year war during which it is estimated over a million lives were lost. ![]() While his people languished in poverty, he built opulent palaces for himself across the country, and his secret police quashed any dissenting voices by force.
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