Monday, December 15, 2003
TEL AVIV, Israel The Israeli military planned a daring
assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein in 1992 -- a plot that
would have involved landing commandos in Iraq and firing
sophisticated missiles at him during a funeral, an Israeli
newspaper reported Tuesday.
The attempt was reportedly called off after an accident during a
training exercise for the mission ended in the deaths of five
soldiers.
The Maariv daily reported that with the capture of Saddam, Israeli
military censors lifted a ban on publication of the full story.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment.
The Israeli military put together the plan to kill Saddam in
retaliation for Iraq's firing of 39 Scud missiles at Israel during
the 1991 Persian Gulf War. However, the plan was never brought
before the government for final approval, the newspaper said.
It said critics warned that whether it succeeded or failed, it
could have triggered Iraqi retaliation in the form of a biological
attack. It also said soldiers from the army's top commando unit,
Sayeret Matkal, were to carry out the mission.
Israeli military intelligence determined that Saddam himself, and
not one of his doubles, would attend the funeral of his
father-in-law in Saddam's home town, and the assassination could be
carried out there, Maariv said.
The commandos would set up a few miles from the cemetery and fire
two specially designed missiles that would home in on Saddam, who
wore a lighter color military uniform from other soldiers. The
custom-made missiles were named "Obelisk," the paper said.
After the assassination, the commandos were to be flown out of Iraq
on an Israeli plane that would take off from a temporary airfield
built in Iraq, the paper said.
The training mishap occurred during one of the final practices on
Nov. 5, 1992, at the large Tzeelim training base in the southern
Negev desert.
The five soldiers, members of the elite unit, were playing the part
of the targets, Saddam Hussein and his bodyguards, and the other
commandos were to fire a dummy missile at them. By mistake, a live
missile was substituted 
, and the five were killed. Six others were
wounded.
The mishap led to cancellation of the assassination attempt. Maariv
reported that in fact, as predicted by Israeli intelligence, Saddam
himself attended the funeral where he was to have been
targeted.
The top commanders of the Israeli military were at the base to
watch the exercise, including the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ehud
Barak, later Israel's prime minister. The fact of his presence came
out a few days after the mishap, leading to rumors about the real
mission, including the possibility that it was aimed at
Saddam.
Israeli military censors clamped a tight lid on the accident and
the purpose of the training, banning publication of the details.
After two foreign newspapers printed stories that the target was
Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the Israeli
government suspended the press credentials of the papers' reporters
in Israel, charging that they had broken censorship rules.
Maariv reported Tuesday that the Nasrallah story was a government
plant to distract reporters from the real target -- Saddam -- and
the suspension of the reporters' press credentials was part of the
deception.