One of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's most feared lieutenants is directly involved in attacks on occupying soldiers, the US Army said today.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said American forces were hunting Izzat Ibrahim, number six on a US list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis, and were "getting closer every day."
"We are getting more intelligence that suggests he was directly implicated in the killing of some coalition soldiers," he told a news conference in Baghdad.
Two more American soldiers were killed today in separate attacks in Saddam's former powerbase north of Baghdad, a military spokesman said. One was killed and two were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack this morning. A few minutes later, a soldier was killed in the same area by a bomb blast.
The attacks brought to 162 the number of US soldiers killed in action since Washington declared major combat over on May 1st - not including 17 soldiers who died last Saturday when two helicopters collided and crashed in the northern city of Mosul.
The US military says the crash is still being investigated, but soldiers in Mosul and witnesses say the Black Hawks collided after one came under guerrilla fire.
Ibrahim, King of Clubs in a deck of cards issued to US troops to help them identify fugitive Iraqis, is the most senior Iraqi still on the run aside from Saddam himself.
He was considered one of the most ruthless enforcers of Saddam's rule and one of the former Iraqi president's most trusted confidants. His daughter was briefly married to Saddam's elder son Uday - killed in July along with his brother Qusay when US troops stormed a safehouse in Mosul.
Ibrahim was Saddam's number two in the ruling Revolutionary Command Council and held a senior post on a government committee in charge of northern Iraq when chemical weapons were used against the town of Halabja in 1988, killing thousands of Kurds.
Facing mounting losses in Iraq, the US Army is trying new tough tactics, using aerial bombing and satellite-guided missiles for the first time since the end of major combat to target suspected guerrilla hideouts.