Airstrikes on Iraq Detailed

Iraq’s former information minister said in remarks broadcast Wednesday that U.S. airstrikes once came within hundreds of yards of hitting Saddam Hussein during the war that toppled the Iraqi leader.

“There was once when they were within a block, 400 to 500 meters,” former Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf told Abu Dhabi TV. “We were together in a meeting and we could hear the bombing. It was

Sahaf was speaking to Abu Dhabi TV in a weekly interview about the war.

During the war, there were reports that U.S. missiles had struck much closer to Hussein than Sahaf said. After one April attack in Baghdad’s Mansour district, U.S. and British officials said they thought Hussein had only narrowly escaped.

Sahaf, who turned himself in to U.S. forces and was later released, went to the United Arab Emirates in July.