US special forces raid home of 'Dr Germ'

American special forces today raided the Baghdad home of the female microbiologist nicknamed Dr Germ who ran Iraq’s secret biological laboratory.

The commandos, backed by about 40 US marines with heavy calibre machine guns, carried several boxes of documents out of Rihab Taha’s house.

Taha, the wife of a former Iraqi oil minister, ran a lab that produced weaponised anthrax. Three men were led out of her home with their hands in the air, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, another marine unit discovered an abandoned terrorist training camp near the capital where recruits were taught how to make bombs.

Cpl John Hoellwarth said the camp was made up of about 20 permanent buildings and had been run jointly by the Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Palestine Liberation Front.

Documents found included forms with questions like “What type of missions would you like to carry out?” he said. Many recruits replied that they wanted to carry out suicide missions.

The camp included an obstacle course and what appeared to be a prison used to teach recruits what to do if captured and interrogated, Hoellwarth said. Recruits were also apparently taught how to make bombs, and he said the marines had found chemicals, beakers and pipes.

Despite the start of joint US-Iraqi police patrols, throngs of looters ransacked food from a major Baghdad warehouse complex.

At the Baghdad International Fairgrounds, hundreds of people helped themselves to sacks of sugar, tea and flour stored in warehouses before the war. Booty was piled into a red double-decker bus, or stuffed into cars which soon became trapped in a traffic jam.

A US armoured car was less than a mile away, but the soldiers did not intervene.

The looting came a day after small numbers of Iraqi policemen resumed their duties and made their first arrest. Looting and lawlessness has plagued the city of five million since Saddam’s regime collapsed.

In one of the US military’s most successful policing actions, a marine patrol passing the Iraqi National Bank in Baghdad yesterday caught a gang of armed robbers and millions of US dollars.

Other marine patrols conducted raids, sometimes accompanied by Iraqi police, to secure key infrastructure sites. US forces are trying to provide security for hospitals and establish a mobile phone service for the emergency services to use while the regular telephone system is repaired.

In western Iraq, the 12th Iraqi Brigade surrendered yesterday to US forces, which seized 40 tanks and close to 1,000 weapons, US Central Command said.

Although major combat in Iraq is over, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Richard Myers, said he worried that Iraqi chemical or biological weapons could still fall into the hands of terrorists.

The US military is conducting far-flung searches of suspected illegal weapons sites, but so far has not confirmed finding any of the weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration says Iraq was hiding.

“We still have a lot of work to do in finding and securing weapons of mass destruction sites and making sure that those biological and chemical weapons don’t fall in the hands of terrorists,” Myers said.

US officials meanwhile said Abul Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner Achille Lauro in 1985, had been captured in a commando raid in Baghdad.

The Palestinian Authority demanded his release today, saying his arrest violated a 1995 interim agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

According to the deal, no PLO officials were to be arrested for violent acts committed before the 1993 Israel-PLO pact of mutual recognition, said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat.

There were reports that Italy, which operated the Achille Lauro, might request Abbas’ extradition.

Abbas is believed to have been inactive most of the time since the hijacking. However, US Navy Capt Frank Thorp, a Central Command spokesman, said Abbas’ capture showed a link between Saddam’s regime and terrorism.

“The Secretary of Defence said that one of his biggest concerns was the nexus between this regime, that regime, and international terrorism,” Thorp said. “And I think this demonstrates that nexus was there.”

US officials would not disclose their plans for Abbas, captured during one of several commando raids on Monday night on hide-outs of the Palestine Liberation Front. Commandos captured several associates of Abbas, as well as documents and weapons.

The commanding general of US Marine forces in Iraq, Lt Gen Earl Hailston, said today that much remains to be done in Iraq, even if Saddam’s military has been crushed.

“We need to continue looking for and securing weapons, ferreting out the remainder of unconventional warriors, and we need to get this country started again.” he said at an airfield on the southern edge of Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown that fell to the marines this week.

In northern Iraq, US officers were trying to determine the details of an armed confrontation involving marines in the city of Mosul.

The New York Times said 10 people were killed by US gunfire yesterday.

It quoted Iraqis as saying marines fired into a crowd of civilians, while marine officers said the troops fired back after being fired upon.

“The marines were fired upon by away from the crowd,” Thorp said. “They fired back, but they never fired at the crowd. They fired to suppress the fire that was coming at them. I don’t have any reports that they hit anybody.”

Reports of casualties in Mosul raised concern that resentment of American forces might rise in the north’s largest city.

Anger at Americans has already been rising in Baghdad because of the looting and continued disruption to utilities.

US officials have said it could take weeks to restore Iraq’s power grid and water system, although some cities are already showing good progress.

The system already was run down by years of sanctions and neglect under Saddam, and was further eroded by sabotage and bomb damage during nearly a month of war.