A bodyguard of Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin and aide known as "Chemical Ali" has been confirmed dead in a coalition air strike, but there was no word onthe fate of Ali himself.
A US Central Command official this morning said the corpse had been identified in the wreckage of yesterday's strike on the house of Ali Hassan al-Majid, who won his grisly nickname for ordering gas attacks that killed thousands of Kurds in 1988.
Investigators were digging through the debris at his house inthe southern Iraqi city of Basra but Ali has not been found, theofficial said.
Two coalition aircraft struck the building with "laser-guidedmunitions" on Saturday.
Majid ordered the 1988 mustard gas attack on Halabja village tosuppress a Kurdish uprising backed by Iran, which was then at warwith Iraq. An estimated 5,000 people died, most of them women andchildren.
Considered a right-hand man of the Iraqi president, Majid wasput in charge of defending southern Iraq ahead of the US-led warlaunched March 20 to topple Saddam's regime.
New York-based Human Rights Watch in a report earlier this yearcalled for the arrest and prosecution of Majid, saying he wasresponsible for the deaths or "disappearances" of around 100,000non-combatant Kurds when he put down their revolt.
Al-Majid held authority over state agencies in Iraq's Kurdishregions at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. He later played keyroles in Iraq's 1990-91 occupation of Kuwait and in the suppressionof a Shiite Muslim uprising following the 1991 Gulf war.
AFP