Senior Saddam aide dies, say reports

DUBAI - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's deputy, Izzat Ibrahim, has died, Al Arabiya satellite television quoted a Baath party statement as saying.

Ibrahim was the most senior member of the former regime still at large and had been a top insurgent leader. He is number six on the US military's list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis, with a $10 million reward offered for his capture.

An Al Arabiya correspondent in Baghdad said the Baath party had sent a statement to a number of Arab and Western media by email.

Senior Iraqi government officials were so far unaware of the statement but said they were checking.

The US State Department said it had no information on reports of Ibrahim's death.

Sources close to people still active in Saddam's Baath Party said they were not aware of the announcement and were themselves trying to check it.

The Al Arabiya correspondent quoted the Baath party statement as saying Ibrahim died at 2am on Friday (12.00pm NZT). The correspondent said the statement did not indicate that he had died in a military clash or been killed.

"It can be said he died of natural causes," Arabiya's correspondent said, adding that Ibrahim probably died in Iraq.

There was no confirmation from other sources and one website which publishes regular news releases from Baath party supporters made no mention of the death.

Born in 1942, Ibrahim was deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, which Saddam headed, and helped plot the 1968 coup that brought the Baath party to power.

He had been widely rumoured to have cancer and had been very ill while in hiding.

He was a senior official responsible for northern Iraq when poison gas was used on Halabja in 1988, killing some 5,000 Kurds.

Ibrahim last appeared in public weeks before the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, when he laid a wreath at a Baghdad monument in memory of the hundreds of thousands killed in the 1980-1988 war with Iran.

He was in charge of the northern front during the war.

Over the past year, US and Iraqi forces have detained several members of Ibrahim's extended family, and claimed at one point to have captured Ibrahim himself, but he remained on the run.

- REUTERS