Iraq Embed: Tikrit

DECEMBER 2008 - HHB, 3rd Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. COB Speicher.

Tikrit is among westerners perhaps best known for being the birthplace, in 1937, of Saddam Hussein. During the subsequent occupation, Tikrit became the scene of a number of insurgent attacks against the occupation forces. It is commonly regarded as being the northern angle of the "Sunni Triangle" within which the National Resistance is at its most intense.

After the fall of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein was on the run in and around Tikrit. He was hidden by relatives and supporters for a period of about six months. During his final period in hiding, he sought refuge in a small hole just outside the town of ad-Dawr, fifteen kilometres south of Tikrit on the eastern bank of the Tigris, a few kilometers southeast of his hometown of Owja.