Trapped in a spider hole

He was, in the words of one U.S. military commander, 'caught like a rat'.

Holed up in an underground chamber little bigger than a coffin, Saddam Hussein gave himself up without a fight when troops finally captured him yesterday, apparently resigned to his fate.

Bearded, thin and weary after 250 days on the run, the former dictator had been hiding within sight of one of his 68 palaces.

The 'spider hole' - where he would hide whenever he feared U.S. troops were in the area - was next to a shepherd's mud hut where he had been living.

In stark contrast to the gold-plated opulence of his former homes, it was furnished with little more than a basin, a tap and plastic chairs.

His only means of transport was a battered taxi standing outside, and the two bodyguards who should have been his last line of defence tried to flee before being quickly captured.

Yesterday, as pictures of Saddam's hideout were released to the world, the sequence of events which led to the momentous capture of the despot in Operation Red Dawn became clear.

Major General Ray Odierno, leader of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, which carried out the raid, said that the breakthrough came after the Allies concentrated on interrogating Iraqis with 'family and tribal ties' to Saddam.

'In the last ten days we brought in five to ten members of the families and we got the ultimate information from one of those individuals,' he said.

'He could have been hiding in a hundred or a thousand different places and it just takes finding the right person who will tell you where he might be, and that's what happened last night.'

It was at 10.50am on Saturday (7.50 GMT) that the Coalition ' received

intelligence on the possible whereabouts of Saddam Hussein'.

Two likely places were identified in Ad-Dawr, a village 11 miles from Saddam's home town of Tikrit. They were codenamed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2.

During Saturday, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division were briefed on Operation Red Dawn, and told they were going after a 'High Value Target'.

At that stage, only senior commanders knew the target was going to be 'HVT No 1', the most wanted man in Iraq.

At 6pm, under cover of darkness and 'at lightning speed', around 600 American troops and special forces soldiers under the command of Colonel Jim Hickey began moving on Ad-Dawr with instructions to 'kill or capture' their target, by now known to all the soldiers to be Saddam.

They reached their two objectives at 8pm.

An initial sweep of the two targets revealed nothing, and so the troops cordoned off an area of slightly more than a square mile for a thorough search.

Lieutenant- General Ricardo Sanchez, the most senior U. S. military commander in Iraq, said: 'A suspicious location was found to the north-west of Wolverine 2. It was a small walled compound with a metal lean-to and a mud hut.'

As the troops approached the compound two Iraqis fled. They were later found to be Saddam's bodyguards. Inside the walled compound, and in what had once been a flower bed, the troops found a rug covering the entrance to the 'spider hole' - a shaft leading to an underground chamber.

The hole was further disguised with bricks and dirt placed over a lightweight polystyrene hatch, and at precisely 8.26pm the troops unblocked the entrance and found a shaft six to eight feet deep. The soldiers shone their torches down the shaft and at the bottom was Saddam Hussein.

The once- feared dictator appeared 'tired and resigned' said Sanchez. He surrendered 'without resistance' and not a single shot was fired, though he was armed with a pistol.

'He was caught like a rat,' said Odierno.

Saddam was dirty, dishevelled and thin.

'He was disorientated as he came up, then he was just very much bewildered, then he was taken away,' said Odierno. 'He didn't say hardly anything at all. There was no resistance of any sort. They got him out of there very quickly once we figured out who it was.

'The soldiers were extremely happy and extremely excited, but very professional.'

He added: 'It is rather ironic that he was in a hole in the ground across the river from one of these great palaces he built where he robbed all the money from the Iraqi people.'

At 9.15pm, Saddam was removed to a 'secure area' and taken by helicopter to a secret location. Then the search of his hiding place began.

His purpose-built concrete bolthole, just big enough for a man to lie flat, had a fan in one corner with a stump of pipe sticking out of the wall next to it to enable air to flow in and out. Inside the tiny hut the soldiers found two AK-47 assault rifles and a green metal case with $750,000 in $100 dollar bills.

There was a small kitchen area with a tap, a basin, a stove and two white plastic garden chairs. In one corner was a bed with 'clothes

strewn all over the place', said Odierno, together with a number of new T-shirts and socks still in their wrappers, and sandals.

There were no telephones or other communication equipment.

Standing beside the hideaway was a white- and- orange taxi. A short distance from the compound is the River Tigris. Two boats were moored there and Odierno suggested loyal supporters could have used the river to visit Saddam and bring him supplies.

After the DNA swab was taken from Saddam's mouth to confirm his identity, and videotape of him was taken to be shown to the world hours later, his beard was then shaved off and his debriefing began.

Sanchez, who had seen Saddam overnight, said yesterday that he was 'talkative and co-operative'.

Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, was kept fully informed of developments and within half an hour of Saddam's capture he contacted Washington to inform Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of the raid's possible success.