Saddam receives medical treatment: report

American intelligence believes Saddam Hussein has been injured and is receiving medical treatment in a Baghdad bunker, it was reported today.

The first cruise missile strikes of the war rained down on the Iraqi capital in the early hours of Thursday and were said to be based on information about Saddam’s location that night.

“We know we hit him. We know he was wounded,” a US official involved in tracking Saddam told the USA Today newspaper. “We also believe he hasn’t left Baghdad.”

The Iraqi dictator appeared on state-run TV yesterday, but US intelligence officials and the White House said the tape could have been recorded before the war began and did not necessarily prove he was still in control.

On the tape, Saddam praises his army’s 51st Division. But some troops in the 51st have surrendered in southern Iraq, US officials said.

In public, US officials say they are not sure whether Saddam is alive.

But air attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere continue to make Saddam’s residences and command centres a priority, suggesting an assumption that he is alive.

The newspaper said Delta Force commandos operating in Baghdad have tapped Saddam’s underground phone lines, and claimed the CIA has recruited an Iraqi official who knows where Saddam sleeps.

Some of the bunkers are 300ft underground and are underneath mosques, hospitals and schools to keep coalition forces from bombing them, US intelligence officials have said.