Search for Saddam: Like the Elvis of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein is reported to be dead - while simultaneously popping up in half a dozen places.
Mr Mohanned al-Ajil, who described himself as a former Iraqi army officer, said yesterday he saw Saddam and his sons four days ago outside a mosque in the Aadhamiya district of north Baghdad.
"He was talking with people. The people asked him how the Americans were able to enter Baghdad. He said: 'The closest people to me betrayed me'," said Mr Ajil.
Mr Ibtissam Ali (45), a social worker, stares into a 15-metre wide crater in the Mansour district of the city. "We have to know what his fate was. He is wanted dead or alive."
Mansour is the well-to-do residential area of Baghdad targeted by coalition bombers on April 7th following a tip that Saddam, along with sons Qusay and Uday, were meeting there.
Precision bombs obliterated a restaurant, one of the city's best, and killed several people. But were any of them Saddam or other high-ranking members of his regime?
Amid conflicting signals, the Washington Times reported confidently some days later that the CIA was cock-a-hoop, believing it had indeed decapitated the regime.
British intelligence agents were said to be far less certain, with the UK Defence Secretary, Mr Geoff Hoon, commenting yesterday that he would continue to assume Saddam was alive until proven otherwise.
Some in the Arab media have already reached their conclusions. Quoting sources in the Iraqi Republican Guard, Mr Amir Naffakh, an Iraqi political analyst, told al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based arab satellite channel, that Saddam died in the Mansour attack along with Uday and Qusay.
Mr Naffakh, quoting a source in the Republican Guards, described how Saddam misdirected his troops to repel the US assault to take Baghdad Airport, with the result that thousands of his troops were slaughtered.
He continued: "I acquired this information from a soldier, a guard among the special guards. He says that 40 minutes after the Iraqi President and his two sons entered the command headquarters [in Mansour\], using small vans as a camouflage, the area was heavily bombed.
"Thus the Iraqi President, his two sons and half of the Iraqi military command and some members of the political leadership perished. That explains what happened later when all the commanders and cadres withdrew" leading to the fall of Baghdad.
A Jordanian newspaper, Al-Dustur of Amman, also believes Saddam to be dead. A report by its correspondent Kamal Zakarinah says that the entire leadership, except Mr Izzat Ibrahim, the Deputy President who was given war command of northern Iraq, and Mr Mohammad Said al-Sahaf, the Information Minister, perished in the attack.
According to Mr Zakarinah's report: "Informed sources said that two senior dissident military commanders co-ordinated with one of the most prominent commanders of the Republican Guard, which was supervised by Qusay Saddam Hussein, in monitoring the time and place of the Iraqi leadership's meeting.
"The sources also said that the senior Republican Guard commander executed the mission in a well-planned manner. He informed the two opposition leaders that the Iraqi leadership was meeting in an old house in the Mansuor district and after that the US aircraft bombed the place with a number of massive, guided smart bombs.
"The plan also involved this senior Republican Guard commander issuing orders to the Republican Guard and regular army units following the liquidation of the Iraqi leadership and confirmation that it had taken place.
"He was to order them to gather their weapons in three places in Baghdad and go home until these forces had been summoned back to their units, and this is what happened." - (Reuters)