Allies blast the house of pariah ‘Chemical Ali’

THE US military yesterday said it had found the body of the bodyguard of Iraqi commander “Chemical Ali,” but Iraq dismissed reports the military chief himself may have died in an air strike.

Asked whether Chemical Ali had been killed when US forces bombed his house in the city of Basra on Saturday, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf told reporters in Baghdad: “Let them (bask) in their illusions.”

Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, earned his nickname “Chemical Ali” for overseeing the use of poison gas against Kurdish villagers in 1988.

He is a member of Saddam’s inner circle and has been in charge of Iraq’s southern front during the war. US forces bombed his house in the belief that he had just entered it.

“At this point we can’t say whether Chemical Ali was a casualty in that attack but we have confirmed that his bodyguard is a casualty,” Captain Frank Thorp told Reuters earlier yesterday at Central Command in Qatar.

“It’s very clear we’re one step closer to bringing this regime down,” he said.

US officials said around 3,000 local residents had taken to the streets of Basra on Saturday cheering and celebrating, though they said it was unclear whether the event was directly linked to the attack on Majid’s house.

“We have seen some reaction from the people in Basra to the events of the last couple of weeks,” Thorp said.

“Just yesterday (Saturday) we had reports of about 3,000 Iraqi citizens out in the streets celebrating their new freedom.”

US Central Command said in a statement on Saturday that the strike on the house was “part of an ongoing effort to end Saddam Hussein's regime.”

The statement said two aircraft had struck Majid’s home in Basra, Iraq’s second city in the south of the country, with laser-guided munitions early on Saturday.

US Marines have been hunting Majid across southern Iraq. Last Monday, they launched a dawn raid on the town of Shatra after receiving intelligence he was there with other senior Ba’ath party officials who were coordinating paramilitary forces.

Major General Victor Renuart told a news conference at war headquarters in Qatar on Saturday that Majid was thought to have been in the hospital in the southern town of Nassiriya from which special forces rescued US soldier Jessica Lynch.

“We think that he was there, he had used that area but on the evening of the attack he was not located in that hospital,” Renuart said.

“That’s not to say we haven’t been tracking him down in some other locations and we’ll continue to do so.”