Uday kills again: Iraqi opposition

NICOSIA (AFP): Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son Uday, still recovering from an assassination bid in December, has shot dead a girl after failing to have sex with her, the opposition charged yesterday.

The Iraqi National Congress (INC) said Uday, 33, was being driven to the Doura district of Baghdad earlier this month when the girl caught his eye.

His guards dragged her off to a presidential complex a few days later and "he tried to have sex with her but failed. In a fit of anger, he shot her," said the London-based opposition coalition.

It named the girl as Asil Salman Mansour and said she was from a Christian family in Doura, but gave no precise date for the killing.

"As compensation, her family received 700 dollars and an Oldsmobile car. They have been promised 50 dollars a month but warned not to tell anyone what happened to the girl," the opposition said.

The INC, whose reports are rarely confirmed, also said in the statement sent to AFP that Uday had travelled to Qatar for three weeks in June on a false identity, via Jordan.

Since leaving hospital on June 6, after gunmen sprayed his car with bullets in Baghdad on December 12, he has also killed one of his guards in a fit of anger, according to the INC.

Although the authorities said last month that Uday has made a full recovery, the INC says he is still unable to walk. No arrests have been announced for the attempt on his life.

In 1988, the president's eldest son was briefly jailed for killing an aide to his father, Kamal Hanna Jejo.