At 10AM on July 22, the doorbell to Nawaf al-Zaydan Mohammed’s house in the Falah district of Mosul rang. Outside, amongst the tall, Greek-style columns were 20 operators from Task Force 20. Reinforcing them were some 200 soldiers from the 326th Engineer Battalion and the 3-502nd Infantry of the 101st Air Assault Division under Brigadier General Frank Helmick. The 101st had established support-by-fire positions on the south and northeast sides of the huge stone and concrete house, with additional troops in blocking positions on the road parallel to the house. Mohammed – who three days earlier had approached U.S. forces and told them Uday and Qusay were staying at his house – answered the door and then, as arranged, fled with his son. An interpreter with a bullhorn called out for Uday and Qusay to surrender, and at 1010 Task Force 20 stormed the house.
As the commandos climbed the stairs, they received intense small arms fire from behind a barricade on the house’s second floor. Three Task Force operators were wounded, as well as one soldier in the street. The commandos withdrew, and the 101st opened up with vehicle mounted .50 caliber machine guns. Yet when the operators attempted to storm the house again, they were repelled by AK-47 fire. At 1045 the 101st fired AT-4s and Mark 19 automatic grenade launchers, but the house had two-foot thick concrete walls and bulletproof windows – reinforced with mattresses used as sandbags – and the light anti-tank rockets and 40mm high explosive grenades failed to penetrate the structure or stop the return fire coming from the house.
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| Troops from the 101st firing on the Hussein brothers position in Nazil Mohammed's house. |
Although only four men defended the house – Uday, Qusay, a bodyguard, and Qusay’s son Mustafa – the commanders on the ground decided against simply laying siege to the house as U.S. forces had done with the Papal Nunciature in Panama City during the hunt for Manuel Noriega in 1990. Because of the house’s prepared fortifications, commanders feared it might also have an escape tunnel to nearby buildings allowing Uday and Qusay to escape. Moreover, the brothers had spent much of the firefight frantically calling for reinforcements. Consequently, a prolonged siege might have given insurgents time to assemble and surround the 200 troops surrounding the house, trapping U.S. forces in an ambush similar to Mogadishu in 1993. As it became clear that Uday and Qusay were not going to let themselves be taken alive, U.S. forces evacuated the residents from nearby houses and escalated their attack.
At 1100 a pair of Kiowa Warrior helicopters flew southeast to northwest, firing their .50 caliber machine guns and 2.75 inch rockets at the target. Around noon, Task Force 20 tried to move in and seize the objective, but once again were forced back. The 101st fired more .50 cal and Mark 19s, and 15 minutes later launched a barrage of 18 HMMWV-mounted TOW wire-guided antitank missiles, enough to knock out a company of tanks. BG Helmick had communicated by radio with the 101st’s commander, then-Major General David Petraeus, and they decided to “put TOW missiles right into the window” of the house in order to shock the inhabitants and to damage the building structurally so that it was unfeasible to fight in.” Fired from 200 meters away, they were guided through the windows from which the blocking force had drawn fire, and knocked holes through the mansion’s walls.
At about 1320, Task Force 20 made a final assault on the house. Blasted furniture lay everywhere, and the walls were pockmarked and gouged by the intense American barrage. Although two of the defenders had survived the volley of TOW missiles, there was no movement upstairs. Uday had barricaded himself in a bathroom, clinging to a briefcase full of condoms, Viagra, and cologne. The operators forced entry with an explosive charge and killed the notorious psychopath with aimed shots to the head. Mustafa, firing from under a bed, was killed in the same way.
Although Iraqis celebrated in the streets at the news of the Hussein brothers’ demise, their killing did not significantly affect the growing Sunni insurgency. It also did not bring U.S. forces any closer to capturing their father as Saddam appeared to have completely separated himself from the Ba’ath Party leaders who comprised the deck of cards. Consequently, U.S. forces began to shift the focus of their seizure operations from concentrating on HVTs to Saddam’s “enbablers.”
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| The bodies of the Hussein brothers were eventually shown on Iraqi television to head off conspiracy theories that they had not actually been killed. |
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