Secret CIA and military teams in Iraq and surveillance devices set up to monitor President Saddam Hussein's inner circle have reported that almost the entire Iraqi leadership has vanished.
US military commanders said yesterday they suspected some leaders had headed to Mr Saddam's hometown of Tikrit for a final bloody showdown and that others had fled to Syria.
Dogged fighting by Iraqi forces at Qaim, near the Syrian border, has led some US and British officials to suspect that Iraqi troops there may be protecting important leaders or family members, although it was not clear whom.
As Baghdad slipped from Saddam's control on Wednesday, covert CIA and Special Operations teams dedicated to killing or capturing the Iraqi President and senior leaders discovered that the Baath Party leaders, Republican Guard leaders, troops and high-level government officials they had targeted were not at their usual posts.
The most likely explanation for the sudden drop-off in detectable communications and activity among such a large number of key people, according to reports from analysts in the CIA's Iraq Operation Group at Langley, Virginia, and those working at the US Central Command in Doha, Qatar, is that an order to disappear was given in Saddam's name, and that he is still alive.
Another less probable possibility, intelligence sources said, is that the Iraqi leader died in one of two US air attacks that specifically targeted him. - (AP)