US denies capture of top Saddam deputy in raid

AMERICAN troops carried out a raid near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk yesterday but a military spokesman denied that a top former deputy of Saddam Hussein was captured during the operation.

A member of Iraq's governing council said Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri the top Iraqi fugitive after Saddam was the target of the raid. The Americans have pointed to al-Douri as a co-ordinator of the insurgency against US forces, and last week offered an

€8.25 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

The US raid took place in Hawija, 30 miles west of Kirkuk, and witnesses said American soldiers had arrested dozens of people. In other violence yesterday, an American soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was killed near Samarra, the site of weekend fighting between American troops and guerrillas, the military said.

An Associated Press photographer who arrived at the scene saw American soldiers using a stretcher to carry a body covered in plastic to a military truck.

Witnesses told the photographer that a roadside explosive was detonated under a US military Humvee, which then collided with an Iraqi civilian vehicle.

The incident occurred on the highway just south of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

In Baghdad, workers began dismantling four giant bronze busts of Saddam Hussein that have long been a landmark in the Iraqi capital. The workers used a construction crane to take down the busts in the Republican Palace, in yet another move aimed at eradicating the former leader's influence.

In addition to attacking coalition forces, rebels in recent days have killed a number of nonmilitary personnel, including two Japanese diplomats, two South Korean electrical workers and a Colombian contractor.