Word: tikrit
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...year-old boy Mustafa, and handed them over to the care of the local sheik. The military insisted on burying the two sons without an audience. A checkpoint was set up on the road to the cemetery, according to locals, to keep relatives and the citizens of Tikrit and Owja away while the two men's bodies, in metal boxes, were placed in the ground. The tribe was allowed to bury Mustafa...
...sons Uday and Qusay, proclaiming them martyrs in a "jihad" that would ultimately defeat America. But the tape may turn out to be an auto-epitaph by a man U.S. commanders confidently proclaim will very soon be within their sights. Saddam's top bodyguard was captured near Tikrit on Tuesday, and U.S. commanders have suggested they may be only 24 hours behind a dictator. Once they catch up, the question becomes: Will Saddam be taken alive and tried, or killed like his sons...
...former private secretary to the dictator tells TIME that a small number of Saddam's bodyguards and close associates disappeared when he vanished after the fall of Baghdad. Everyone else from the former regime, the secretary says, is accounted for. These missing few, he says, are known around Tikrit as shabbah, or ghosts. "No one has seen them," he says, "but we know they are out there, helping...
...most prominent ghosts come from Owja, Saddam's home village just south of Tikrit. Khalil Ibrahim Omar al-Mouslit and his brothers Mohammad and Radman were, respectively, Saddam's favorite bodyguard, personal chauffeur and close escort. Mohammad was seen by the butler driving Saddam's white Mercedes out of the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah after the President made a public appearance there on April 9, as the Americans were trying to take control of Baghdad. And the same day, says the former secretary, Radman personally told the other close associates of Saddam that they were no longer needed...
...because so many people in Tikrit think that way that the Raiders stay aggressive. One night last week the Cobra Company of Russell's battalion responded to reports that two men who had launched RPG attacks at a U.S. convoy had run into a nearby house. Cobra Company stormed the place--and found an old Bedouin, his three sons and their wives. The soldiers apologized, and the old man offered them a glass of chilled water and a warning. "Unless you catch Saddam and show his head to the people," he said, holding his clenched hand...