Three Iraqis were killed when a truck bomb exploded soon after a US patrol passed by as two UN security experts arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad to study the possible return of international staff.

Saddam Hussein has been captured alive in his hometown of Tikrit, a member of the US-appointed Governing Council said.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush’s top foreign advisers summoned Iraq’s American administrator for White House talks focused on their growing frustrations with the Iraqi Governing Council and a logjam in transferring political power to Iraqis.

A former top official of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, and cousin of the deposed leader, surrendered to coalition forces in Baghdad today, the US military said.

THE US official sent in to oversee Baghdad and a large swath of its surrounding territory is leaving her position immediately after less than a month, a spokesman for the postwar American administration said yesterday.