Almost entire Iraqi leadership 'didn't come to work'

Almost the entire Iraqi leadership vanished as American armour rolled into the capital Baghdad, it was reported today.

Secret CIA and special forces teams inside the country believe some leading figures from Saddam Hussein’s regime have fled to Tikrit, the dictator’s hometown.

Others escaped across the border into Syria, US military commanders told The Washington Post.

Dogged fighting by Iraqi forces at Qaim, near the Syrian border, has led some US and British officials to suspect the troops there may be protecting important Iraqi leaders or family members.

Speaking at the Pentagon, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also raised the possibility that Iraqi leaders were fleeing to Syria.

“Senior regime people are moving out of Iraq into Syria, and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq,” he said. “We find it notably unhelpful.”

As Baghdad slipped from Saddam’s control yesterday, covert CIA and US commando teams dedicated to killing or capturing the Iraqi president and senior leaders found that the Baath Party leaders, Republican Guard leaders and senior government officials they had targeted were not at their usual posts.

Even Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the regime’s ever-defiant propaganda chief who had given the international press in Baghdad his outlandish version of each day’s events, had vanished.

“All of a sudden, all communications ceased and the regime didn’t come to work,” was the way one senior administration official described what happened in yesterday in the Iraqi capital. “Even the minders for the foreign journalists did not go to work.”

Analysts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, believe the most likely explanation for the regime just melting away is that an order to disappear was given in Saddam’s name – and that he is probably still alive.

“There was no sign of any leaders, anywhere,” another senior US official said.

One less likely possibility, intelligence sources told the paper, is that the Iraqi leader died in one of two US air attacks – on March 19 and April 8 – and that word of his death finally leaked out.

If Saddam is alive, he and his loyalists may have sought refuge in Tikrit, a town 90 miles north of the capital.

“We certainly are focused on Tikrit,” Brig Gen Vincent Brooks said yesterday at US Central Command. The coalition want to stop the regime using it as somewhere “to restore command and control, or to hide.” he said.

He said new Iraqi troops have been deployed to Tikrit to try to “reinforce those initial defences”.

Saddam has been a generous benefactor to the town and has filled key posts in the army, his security forces and the Baath Party with Tikritis.

They, in turn, are extremely loyal to him and are expected to fight hard to protect the dictator.

US officials believe they have fairly credible intelligence from more than a week ago that Saddam’s first wife and other relatives had left Baghdad and probably are in Tikrit.

Brooks has said US special forces have been manning checkpoints on main roads between the capital and Tikrit to control movement between the two.

Capturing or killing Saddam remains a top US priority.

“In order to come to closure” psychologically, “we need to demonstrate he’s not in control anymore,” a senior administration official said. “It will make it easier to start afresh.”