‘Saddam’ tape broadcast on Arab TV
Arab television station al-Jazeera has aired an audio tape claiming to feature deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
On the tape the purported voice of the former dictator says that he is alive and living ‘among Iraqis’.
He adds: ‘I tell you that I miss you, miss you, oh beloved people, even though I am among you and in your ranks.’
The voice warns that Jihad cells made up of Iraqi male and female fighters have been formed on a large scale throughout Iraq to fight US-led coalition forces occupying the country.
It also asks the Iraqi people to support the resistance fighters and to oppose the ‘US infidel occupiers’.
Al-Jazeera said the tape was delivered to the station via telephone on Friday. Question marks about its authenticity have immediately arisen, although the voice is reportedly similar to that of Saddam Hussein.
The US yesterday offered a $25 million (£15 million) reward for information leading to the capture of the former Iraqi dictator or proof that he is dead. A $15 million (£9 million) reward is also being offered for information about Saddam Hussein’s two sons, Uday and Qusay.
News of the tape comes as attacks on allied troops appear to escalate amid growing frustration at the continued occupation by US-UK forces.
Twenty-six American and six British soldiers have been killed in Iraq since major combat was declared over in May. The number of Iraqi combat fatalities remains unknown, but is likely to rank significantly higher.
There has been a spiral of violence in the last 48 hours.
11 Iraqis were killed by US troops north of Baghdad earlier today, the US military says. The troops were responding to an attempted ambush on their convoy near the town of Balad, a spokesman maintained.
The killings follow the fatal shooting of a US soldier and the wounding of 21 people in two attacks in central Iraq yesterday.
The soldier was on a Bradley armoured vehicle guarding the national museum in Baghdad when a sniper reportedly fired. He was rushed to hospital but later died from his wounds.
In a separate incident yesterday, ten soldiers were wounded in a mortar attack on an American military base near Balad.
Two more soldiers were wounded in an explosion in the Iraqi capital on Friday, casting a cloud over US Independence Day celebrations for the fourth of July.
Witnesses say that a blast targeted at the soldier’s Humvee vehicle on the outskirts of Baghdad injured the two Americans and an Iraqi civilian in his car.
