US troops see Saddam hiding in Tikrit

14 October 2003, 18:00 PM

AP, Tikrit

Saddam Hussein is believed to have been hiding out recently in Tikrit, influencing the anti-American insurgency, the US military said Monday. Fresh attacks by resistance forces across central Iraq were reported to have killed three American soldiers and wounded five others.

"We have clear indication he has been here recently," Maj. Troy Smith, a deputy brigade commander, told reporters in Tikrit, the fugitive former president's hometown and now headquarters for the 4th Infantry Division. "He could be here right now," he said of Saddam.

The insurgents' attacks on US occupation forces averaged 22 a day in the past week, the US military reported Monday in Baghdad. That's an increase of several a day over the pace of some weeks earlier, and has resulted in American deaths at a rate of almost one every two days.

The attacks late Sunday and Monday, against 4th Infantry Division troops, took place in Tikrit and at locations north and east of here, according to the US command:

At 7:45 p.m. Sunday, one division soldier was killed and another wounded when their Bradley armored vehicle struck a mine near Beiji, 30 miles north of Tikrit.

At 11:15 a.m. Monday, a division convoy traveling near Jalyula, in a desolate area 80 miles east of Tikrit, was ambushed with a makeshift roadside bomb and small-arms fire. One soldier was killed and two were wounded.