Saddam’s “deputy” still at large
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the second most wanted man in Iraq after Saddam Hussein, has eluded US forces.
A total of 27 suspected guerrillas were caught on Tuesday when 1,000 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade entered the town of Hawija near the northern city of Kirkuk before dawn.
But the man with a GBP6 million price on his head was elsewhere.
Rumours abounded yesterday, predominantly from Iraq’s Governing Council, that Mr Ibrahim had been either captured or killed.
Iraq’s governing council told al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite TV channel, that there was “a very big military operation” in Kirkuk and the captured included a “big fish.”
Mr Ibrahim is sixth on the US list of top Iraqi fugitives. Those above him, excluding Saddam, have all been killed or captured. His daughter was once married to Saddam’s son Uday.
Separately, a US soldier was killed Tuesday by a roadside bomb near the town of Samarra.
According to some US officials, Ibrahim is suspected of collaborating with Ansar al-Islam, an extremist Kurdish Islamist group with suspected links to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
