Bomber crew kills nine in 'The Big One'. But was Saddam Hussein among them?

His air traffic controller was clear as could be about the importance of the mission. As the pilot of the B-1 bomber swooped low, the controller told him: "This is the big one."

The long-range bomber's four crewmen moved swiftly, triple checking their co- ordinates. They were already in the skies over Baghdad.

Twelve minutes after the emergency order, they dropped four satellite-guided 2,000lb earth-penetrating bombs on a house in Baghdad's Mansur district. They left a huge smoking crater where the al-Zaa restaurant used to stand, and at least nine civilians dead.

But their quarry, British intelligence sources signalled last night, may have escaped again: Saddam Hussein, they suggested, is thought to have left the restaurant minutes before the bombs homed in.

Yesterday's was a mournful scene in Mansur, close to an old racecourse where trainers used to walk their horses. Rescue workers dug through the rubble frantically to recover bodies. The Iraqi authorities say at least nine people, including a child, were killed and four wounded. At least four houses were flattened. It is clear from pictures of the damage that nobody in the wrecked building, who may have been innocent civilians, could have survived Monday's deep penetrating bombing.

Yesterday, the doubts over whether President Saddam was dead or alive were putting world financial markets on edge. The picture was indeed confused, although there was one certainty: he was losing control.

Pentagon officials said they might not know for days. Establishing whether he escaped – or sent a double to the meeting – may rest on DNA sampling, they indicated.

"It's possible we may never be able to determine exactly who was present without some detailed forensic work," admitted Brigadier General Vince Brooks at Central Command in Qatar. The British were more confident. Al Lockwood, the main British spokesman, said: "We're fairly certain and we have good source reports saying he has been killed." In war, though, little is certain, and that line was changing later as more intelligence came in.

The Iraqis, predictably, have denied that any of their leaders has been killed. The newspaper of the Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan claimed that President Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, have gone into hiding in Saddam's birthplace and power base of Tikrit.

Either way, America clearly believes it has a source close to the Iraqi leadership who can provide information on the whereabouts of the leader. Forty-five minutes before the strike, commanders in the Gulf had received a tip from the CIA. For the second time in three weeks, one of its moles in Baghdad had passed on what it believed was credible intelligence on where the President and his aides were meeting.

A failed attempt to assassinate President Saddam at the beginning of the war three weeks ago in a missile attack on a complex in the southern suburbs of Baghdad was also prompted by a CIA tip from an individual thought to be in the dictator's entourage.

The CIA has been trying for years to penetrate President Saddam's tight inner circle of security made up of men from his tribe and clan. He has always taken elaborate precautions to avoid assassination by travelling in inconspicuous vehicles and at the last moment moving into a suburban house. He seldom uses bunkers, whose position he assumes are well known to the Americans.

He has been a hunted man before. In 1959, he escaped from Baghdad after attempting to kill President Abd al-Qarim Qassim and swam the Tigris fully dressed to escape. In the 1991 Gulf War, although it was illegal for the United States to take part in assassinating foreign leaders, it tried to hit bunkers where it suspected he might be. More than 400 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the Amariya shelter which the US Air Force thought was used by Iraqi officials. The only time the Americans came close to hitting him was apparently by accident when they bombed a convoy on the Basra road as his car happened to be passing.

This time, the attempted assassinations are the result of far longer consideration. For more than a year the CIA has been trying to recruit an agent at the regime's heart and it clearly believes it has succeeded. One source said: "They came close on 20 February. They got the place right but the timing wrong, though Saddam was near by when the missiles hit."

The Mansur district is in the heart of Baghdad. It is often referred to as fashionable, but its shops and cafés are only a shade less tattered than the rest of the city. But it does contain a number of embassies, including the Russian and the Jordanian. Many members of the elite live there and it it is the site of the Hunting Club, founded by President Saddam himself in the late 1960s after he and his fellow Baathists found themselves blackballed from other establishments.

Mansur was also the site where gunmen tried and nearly succeeded in killing President Saddam's elder son, Uday, in 1996. In a a carefully organised ambush, he was hit by eight bullets and was probably only saved because his would-be killers thought he would be driving his car and not sitting in the passenger seat.

It is difficult to imagine the feelings in President Saddam's inner circle as US soldiers penetrate the heart of Baghdad. The great siege promised with the Special Republican Guard, drawn from the tribes most closely allied to their leader, fighting it out to the last bullet has not materialised.

President Saddam is probably experiencing a sense of betrayal that neither the Republican Guard nor the Special Republican Guard has really fought so far. Unless he is holding some of them in reserve they appear to have evaporated, sensing that defeat is inevitable. Many of the tanks that television cameras with the advancing US divisions have shown blazing by the wayside had already been abandoned, according to the US Army.

On whom can President Saddam rely in what are probably his last moments? There are his sons, but both were trained as secret policemen rather than as soldiers. There is his wife, Sajida, also his cousin, whom he married in 1963. The President always put relatives belonging to Albu Ghafar lineage of his own Baijat clan, which in turn belongs to the Albu Nasir tribal federation, in charge of the most sensitive offices in security and in the Republican Guards but this does not seem to have been enough.

So far, though, this family group has held together. There were no important defections in the run-up to the war. On the other hand, if there were dissidents, or more likely those who wanted to survive and be highly paid by the CIA, it might be that they would have been told to stick with their leader.

Splits in the family have happened before. In 1995, his two sons-in-law, Hussain and Saddam Kamel, defected to Jordan only to return unwisely the next year and be killed.

A group whose loyalty is not bound by blood ties are the experts whom President Saddam grouped around him. For all the disastrous political mistakes in invading Iran and Kuwait, the Iraqi leader was a good organiser. He valued capable men even if he did not always take their advice. Yet people such as Naji Sabri, the Foreign Minister, worked tirelessly to the last minute to avert a war. It is also clear, however, that President Saddam had prepared himself against defections and any sign of failing loyalties would be immediately punished by execution.

He may just possibly have foreseen that he would be trapped in his capital and made plans to escape. But where a safe refuge could be found is difficult to imagine. And flight and humiliation does not fit in with his own image of himself as the great Iraqi and Arab hero, defiant to the end.

Iraqi president's inner circle

Qusay Hussein

Saddam Hussein's second son and heir apparent after his promotion to a leadership role in the Baath party two years ago, when he sidelined his elder brother Uday. Qusay, 37, is in charge of the Republican Guard and his father's personal security. He is responsible for the defence of Baghdad and Saddam's home region of Tikrit.

Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri

Deputy head of the Revolutionary Command Council, chaired by Saddam. Mr Douri, 60, has known the President since the early days and has been vice-chairman of the Baath party's ruling council since Saddam seized power in 1979. His daughter is married to Uday Hussein. Accused of complicity in the invasion of Kuwait, and repression of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs after the 1991 Gulf War. He has presided over special courts that prosecuted regime opponents.

Tariq Aziz

For many years the public face of the regime as Foreign Minister, and now Deputy Prime Minister. Despite seeming to be a loyal aide, he may harbour doubts because of being exposed to international opinion. Mr Aziz is the only Christian in the Iraqi leadership.

Abid Hammoud Al-Tikriti

President Saddam's bodyguard and a distant cousin. He controls access to the President, and was seen with him on television last week.

Anne Penketh