US forces turn up the heat on Saddam’s most notorious henchman

AMERICAN forces yesterday turned their sights on one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen.

Using precision-guided bombs, tanks and helicopter gun-ships, they moved on the town in Iraq where they believe the man nicknamed “Chemical Ali” was holed up.

An attack was launched at dawn on Shatra, a town just north of Nassiriya, and their targets included “Chemical Ali”, real name Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader.

Al-Majid was responsible for using chemical weapons against Kurds in Iraq in 1988 and remains one of Saddam’s most trusted and feared aides.

He was believed to be heavily involved in organising the current paramilitary resistance to coalition forces.

The US Marines struck after tip-offs that Al-Majid and other senior Ba’ath Party members were there. They were believed to be organising raids on US supply lines.

The Marines who carried out the raid had been heading north for Baghdad but turned round to focus on Shatra to help secure the supply lines, military sources said.

Reuters reporter Sean Maguire, embedded with the US Marines, said precision bombs hit four targets in Shatra before tanks, armoured personnel carriers and helicopter gun-ships firing machine guns moved in.

In southern Iraq, the net was closing on Saddam loyalists in the city of Basra yesterday in the wake of the biggest offensive so far in Iraq by Royal Marine commandos.

British forces staged a dawn raid on a building used as a headquarters for Saddam’s ruling Ba’ath party.

Five people were arrested and taken away for interrogation in the assault designed to boost the confidence of the intimidated local population, said Greg Swift of the Daily Express in a pooled dispatch.

The action followed on from the push made by the Royal Marines on Sunday.

By nightfall, around 600 Royal Marines from 40 Commando had taken up a “consolidation position” in the southern Basra suburb of Abu al Khasib after a 15-hour assault designed to encourage Saddam Hussein’s opponents in Basra to rise up against his regime.