Troops arrest Saddam’s bodyguards
"I believe that we continue to tighten the noose," Major General Ray Odierno, commander of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division, told reporters at the Pentagon during a teleconference from Tikrit. "I believe 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.
Odierno said an informant came forward to members of a US Army brigade in Tikrit, hometown of Saddam, 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 "somewhere between five and 10 of those we're still sorting through it are believed to be Saddam Hussein's personal security detachment".
Odierno said the captives were being interrogated. He said he could not say how recently they had been with Saddam and gave no indication that finding Saddam might be imminent.
US officials have said they believe Saddam is hiding somewhere inside Iraq, and they are confident that they will find him.
Odierno said 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.
Odierno commands US forces in a large zone that starts just north of Baghdad, stretching 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 corpses 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 southeast of Samarra.
US troops dug up a container there that 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-machine guns, as well as bomb detonation cord, Odierno said.
He said arms from this cache may have been used to stage some of the attacks on US troops around Samarra.
Odierno said attacks against US forces in his region had dropped by about 50% over the past month, but some of the attacks being mounted were becoming more sophisticated.
