Saddam was 'dishevelled and had long beard'

US raiders were not certain at first they had Saddam when they pulled a bearded man from a hole in a Iraq cellar, but soon were able to determine it was Saddam Hussein.

The Associated Press was shown documentary evidence that the person captured was Saddam Hussein. The evidence depicted Saddam as dishevelled and wearing a long beard.

Further evidence depicted Saddam with his trademark moustache but otherwise clean shaven.

At a news conference in Baghdad, US military officials played a video showing a bearded Saddam Hussein wearing beard and being examined by medics.

US Republican Ike Skelton, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was telephoned early today by Powell Moore, the deputy secretary of defence for legislative affairs, who told him Saddam had been captured.

“The capture of Saddam Hussein will clearly take the wind out of the sails of the Baath insurgents,” Mr Shelton said. “I think the road to a more stable Iraq is much clearer as a result of this capture.”

One senior US official said scientific testing, possibly including DNA, was being done early Sunday morning to document Saddam’s identity.

The official said the captured man did not look like Saddam at first glance.

The officials discussing identification methods did so only on condition of anonymity.

The military raids, in and near Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, were based on fresh intelligence and were aimed at capturing Saddam, the officials said, and the man was captured in one of the targeted buildings.

“He was in a cellar of the building. His appearance was such that it made it not immediately certain you could say it was Saddam Hussein,” one senior US official said.

But some marks on the man’s body and other information gave the US military its first confirmation they had their target, officials said.

The officials said several other people were captured in the raids.

Saddam’s capture will be seen as a defining moment in the Iraq war and subsequent rebuilding process, and US administration officials have hoped it would lessen or break the organised resistance against US troops that have led to scores of deaths since the end of combat operations.

Saddam proved elusive at least twice during the war, when dramatic military strikes came up empty in their efforts to assassinate him. Since then, he has appeared in both video and audio tapes. US officials named him No 1 on their list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.

But US officials struck a major blow earlier this year when they killed Saddam’s two sons during a raid.

Still, Saddam and his uncanny ability to survive kept him out of US custody for more than six months after the war started. Within hours of the air strike designed to kill at the start of the war in March, Saddam defiantly appeared on television and urged Iraqis to resist the US invasion.

But worn down by three decades of war and tension, the once-mighty Iraqi army folded quickly and US officials took control of the country quicker than they expected.

Since then, loyalists led by remnants of Saddam’s paramilitary Fedayeen unit have begun operating like insurgent terrorists, using car bombings and grenade attacks to impose casualties.