*EPF201 04/08/2003
White House Report: Outcome of Attack on Iraqi Leaders Not Known, U.S. Says
(April 8, 2003) (220)

The fate of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is uncertain after a U.S. bomber dropped four "bunker buster" bombs on a building in a residential area of Baghdad where intelligence indicated he and his sons may have been meeting April 7.

A day after the air attack, a U.S. Central Command spokesman in Qatar said that coalition forces had targeted "senior leaders" of the Iraqi regime in a bomb attack in the Baghdad suburb of al Mansour.

President Bush said he had no knowledge of whether Saddam Hussein was dead or alive.

"I don't know whether he survived," Bush said. "The only thing I know is he's losing power," he said April 8 in remarks he made with British Prime Minister Tony Blair following a summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

"It's important for the Iraqi people to continue to hear this message: We will not stop until they are free. Saddam Hussein will be gone. It might have been yesterday, I don't know. But he'll be gone and they need to know that, because we're not leaving."

Blair echoed Bush, telling reporters, "The power of Saddam is ending."
He added, "There's not going to be a repeat of 1991."

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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