Is Saddam In Syria?

Take with a grain of salt - DEBKAfile has ties to military and intelligence sources in Israel but does not check sources and often spreads rumours.

US 101st Airborne

With little fanfare, units of the US 101st Airborne Division are responsible for the third consecutive day of explosions and artillery fire heard in Baghdad from the west. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that this division has plugging away since last Thursday to cut Al Ramadi off from Falluja and seize control of Expressway No. 1 leading out of the capital to the western region. Units of the 101st are also making progress towards securing the giant air base at Habaniyah between the two towns. This facility is close enough to Baghdad – 90 km – to enable US bombers and helicopters to double or treble their round-the-clock strike rate against the capital.

On the exact 14th day of the Iraq War, Wednesday, April 2, the Saddam regime looked as though it had breathed its last. Its primary military props, the Special Republic Guards divisions, Saddam’s Fedayeen suicides and Iraqi intelligence’s special commando units, were clearly losing their grip as a functioning command in control of a coherent force of resistance. Iraqi elite units were letting key positions drop into the hands of the coalition forces already dangerously close to Baghdad, without lifting a finger. The SRG Baghdad Division did nothing to stop allied forces crossing the Tigris bridges from west to east although it was their job to blow them up and prevent the allied advance. Commanders were rumored to have been summarily fired; others disappeared.

DEBKAfile’s Exclusive Middle East sources have tracked down the top Iraqi leadership’s bolt-hole. It is a large 1,600-room luxury resort with 600 meters of private sandy beach in the Mediterranean coastal town of Latakiya called Cote d’Azur De Cham Resort, prepared and chartered in toto by Baghdad.

The group may include Saddam Hussein or his sons, but this is not confirmed.