BAGHDAD - A half-brother of ousted president Saddam Hussein, accused of masterminding Iraq's deadly insurgency from neighboring Syria, has been arrested, officials said.
The US military announced the deaths of three more of its soldiers in Iraq, as insurgents shot dead five Iraqi policemen and at least five other people were killed in a bomb attack.
The latest unrest came as one of the groups blamed for many attacks mocked claims by Iraqi security chiefs that the noose was tightening around its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the country's most wanted man.
A government statement said security forces had "captured the criminal Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikrit, half-brother of Saddam Hussein and one of the leaders of the ... past regime who killed and tortured sons of the Iraqi people."
Saddam's advisor and intelligence chief, a key post in the old regime, Hassan was number 36 on the US list of 55 most-wanted former regime officials in Iraq. The government provided no details on when or where he was arrested.
Hassan and a former aide directed the Baathist strain of the insurgency from Syria, where they had access to funds and directed a network of Iraqi army veterans, intelligence chief Mohammad Abdullah al-Shahwani told AFP in January.
Two other half-brothers of Saddam, Barzan and Watban, were already being held at a US army-run jail near Baghdad and are set to be tried in the coming months.
Hassan was one of about a dozen of the top officials of the Saddam regime who have so far escaped arrest or death at the hands of American-led security forces.
The most-senior figure among former regime officials still at large is Ezzat Ibrahim al-Duri, Saddam's former deputy. He has a 10-million-dollar bounty on his head.
Saddam himself -- the ace of spades on the US deck of playing cards of fugitives -- was arrested in December 2003 when US troops who found him in a hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq.
Detained former regime leaders face charges of warcrimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, any of which could result in a sentence of death by hanging or firing squad.
The new US commander for the Baghdad region said Sunday that he hoped to be able to hand over security responsibility for the city to Iraqi forces this year but warned a renewed surge of violence was likely first.
"It's highly possible but again it will be driven by events," Major General William Webster of the Third Infantry Division told AFP after a ceremony at which he took over command of the 30,000 troops of Task Force Baghdad.
Transferring control on the ground to Iraqi security forces has been a mantra for US officials and military leaders as they seek an exit strategy for their 150,000 troops nearly two years after the invasion.
But the process has taken far longer than envisaged. Iraqi security forces have suffered from infiltration and intimidation by insurgents, and in some instances have refused to fight rebels or have fled battles.
In Washington, Republican Senator John McCain said last month's election in Iraq was already having an effect throughout the Middle East. He cited just-called multi-candidate presidential elections in Egypt as the most recent example of the regional sea change.
However, unrest continued across Iraq over the weekend.
The US military said three more of its troops had been killed on Saturday.
Two soldiers were killed in a bomb and gunfire attack in Baghdad, while a US Marine was killed in action in the province of Babil, south of the capital, it said.
Insurgents on Sunday shot dead five policemen and killed at least five people in a bomb attack, Iraqi police said.
Police also found the bodies of eight people, one of them a headless woman with a note attached denouncing her as a spy, six of them apparently soldiers and the eighth a businessman who was working with US troops.
Al-Qaeda's branch in Iraq denied claims that the net was closing in on its leader Zarqawi.
"We assure our brothers that our leaders are in the best of health ... and in command of their men," said an Internet statement purportedly from Zarqawi's network.
In Turkey, Anatolia news agency reported that US troops raided in mid-February the offices of the Turkmen political party in northern Iraq, breaking windows and doors and firing at random from the building.

02/28/2005 01:29 GMT