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The Men Who Shot Uday Hussein in 1996

(Christian Science Monitor) - Peter Ford As Salman Sharif gave the order to open fire, he was certain he was going to die himself. You did not try to assassinate Uday Hussein, the former Iraqi president's elder son and heir-apparent, at point blank range and expect to get away with it. But after months of careful planning, the four-man hit squad drawn from a shadowy resistance group was determined to go ahead. As Uday Hussein drove his golden Porsche slowly up a busy street in one of Baghdad's smartest districts, just after dark on Dec. 12, 1996, two gunmen responded to Sharif's command with a hail of bullets from their AK-47 rifles. "We were sure we had killed him," Sharif recalls. "We fired 50 rounds into that car." In fact, he discovered later, Uday had been hit 17 times but survived. Still, the unprecedented assassination attempt on a member of the ruling Baath Party's inner circle sent an important message. "We showed that the Islamic resistance could reach any target at any time," Sharif says.
2003-10-01 00:00:00
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