Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 15 January 2004 — The US military announced it had captured number 54 on its list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis as a car bomb blew up outside a police station in central Iraq yesterday, killing five people.

Witnesses said a green civilian car charged toward the main gate of the police compound in the restive town of Baqubah, about 65 km north of Baghdad, and detonated in front of a crowd of passersby and police. The US military in Baghdad said five people were killed and 29 were injured, many of them Iraqi police. However, doctors in Baqubah said only two were killed. There were also conflicting reports about whether it was a suicide attack.

The early morning attack came hours after a pre-dawn raid by US troops in the town of Samarra, about 100 km north of Baghdad and another hotbed of anti-Americanism, during which they seized four nephews of Izzat Ibrahim, the most wanted man still at large in Iraq.

Ibrahim, a former right-hand man of Saddam Hussein, is number six on the most-wanted list and has a $10 million bounty on his head. He is believed to have been behind several of the attacks on US troops over the past eight months of insurgency.

The US military said the capture of the relatives, two of whom are believed to have arranged safe houses for Ibrahim, made it more likely they would get him sooner or later. US authorities said troops had this week captured a former Baath party chairman from south of Baghdad.

“As a result of aggressive operations this week, the coalition announces the capture of Khamis Sirhan Al-Muhammad, number 54 on the most wanted list,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a news conference in Baghdad. US troops killed eight Iraqis in a firefight near the volatile town of Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad on Tuesday when US forces came under attack from insurgents.