Saddam Hussain Arrested, No Weapons of Mass Destruction Found, Car Bomb Kills 17 after the arrest

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U.S. troops arrested the Iraqi President, Saddam Hussain, hiding in a hole near his home town of Tikrit in a major coup for Washington's beleaguered occupation force in Iraq.

Grubby and bearded the 66-year-old Saddam was dug out by troops from a cramped hiding pit during a raid on a farm in Ad-Dawr village late Saturday, the jubilant U.S. commander in Iraq Ricardo Sanchez said Sunday.

Gunfire crackled out in celebration in some areas predominantly inhabited by Shi'a greeting a U.S. military video showing their once feared leader, disheveled and sporting a bushy black and gray beard, undergoing a medical examination after seven months on the run.

The arrest is a boon for President Bush after a run of increasingly bloody attacks on U.S. troops and their allies that imperil his campaign for re-election next year. Saddam may also provide intelligence on alleged banned weapons. But no weapons of mass destruction were found in the hole he was hiding in. The former president, who once seemed almost to believe his own claims of invincibility and urged his men to go down fighting the invaders, gave up without a shot being fired, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a news conference in Baghdad.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," a beaming U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said in his first comments to the news conference where the film was shown. "The tyrant is a prisoner."

Leading members of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council said they would put Saddam on trial in Baghdad. He may face the death penalty as he answers for a three-decade reign of terror and for leading his oil-rich nation into three disastrous wars.

"We want Saddam to get what he deserves. I believe he will be sentenced to hundreds of death sentences at a fair trial because he's responsible for all the massacres and crimes in Iraq," said Amar al-Hakim, a senior member of the Shi'ite party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which came to Iraq after the war.

The White House warned, however, that Saddam's capture may not mean an end to violence, which continued hours after he was seized, with a suspected suicide car bombing that left at least 17 dead at a police station in Khalidiyah, west of Baghdad (more below).

U.S. officials say anti-American Muslim militants affiliated to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network have become active in Iraq amid the chaos following Saddam's ousting on April 9.

U.S. officials will also hope to extract vital intelligence on the alleged weapons programs which formed the public grounds for Bush to go to war in defiance of many U.N. allies. Little evidence of banned weapons has been found, helping fuel continuing international wrangling over the lack of security in Iraq and the cost of rebuilding a country that holds the world's second biggest oil reserves.

However, there was broad consensus among opponents of the U.S. invasion that getting Saddam behind bars was a good thing. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, both fierce critics of Bush's war, hailed the arrest.

"This has lifted a shadow from the people of Iraq. Saddam will not be returning," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's main ally in the invasion of March 20.

In the Arab world, there were mixed feelings, with many ordinary people welcoming the final humiliation of a man who had invaded two of his neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, oppressed Iraq's Shi'ite majority and launched gas attacks on Kurdish villages.

Others, however, regretted the role the U.S. occupiers played in his overthrow and capture and some lamented the passing of a figure they saw as a defender of Arab interests in the face of the global superpower.

Saddam's capture was in stark contrast to the bloody demise of his once powerful sons Uday and Qusay, who went down with guns blazing against an overwhelming U.S. force in July.

Saddam kept up a series of taped appeals to his countrymen after that. But a huge manhunt and the $25 million price on his head must have cramped his role in the guerrilla war. It was unclear if any bounty would be paid for his capture -- U.S. forces paid out $30 million to a man who informed on his sons.

Sanchez said the farm where Saddam was seized near Ad Dawr, south of Tikrit, had been surrounded by troops acting on a tip.

It was a humiliating end to a lifelong adventure that began not far away in a poor village on the Tigris river outside Tikrit. Clan connections in the Sunni-dominated military and a taste for ruthless street violence took Saddam to the top of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath party which seized power in a 1968 coup.

He crushed all opposition and spent huge amounts of Iraq's oil wealth on marble-lined palaces and massive monuments to himself. Many of the former are now barracks for U.S. troops while the latter were pulled down by US forces months ago.

The soldiers finally tracked the fugitive down to the bottom of a narrow, man-sized hole in the ground, some two to three-meters (six to eight feet) deep, Sanchez said.

Washington had made Saddam number one -- the "ace of spades" -- on a list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis.

Saddam would be put on trial, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi told Reuters. A tribunal system for Iraqis to try Saddam and fellow Ba'athist leaders was set up only last week and U.S. officials say it could make use of capital punishment.

KHALIDIYAH, Iraq - A car bomb ripped through a police station west of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 17 people, in the latest attack on the force central to Washington’s plans to hand over power to Iraqis.

US troops on the scene said there a suicide bomber may have been behind the blast. It left a thick cloud of black smoke rising into the sky over the restive village of Khalidiyah, 60 km (35 miles) from the capital, around 8:40 a.m. (0540 GMT).

Pools of blood, shattered glass and scattered shoes littered the street. A US officer said 17 were dead and 33 wounded. None were Americans or from allied foreign forces. An Iraqi police major put the toll at 16 dead and 32 wounded.

US troops and several Bradley armoured vehicles and tanks stood off about 50 metres (yards) from station, with soldiers stepping in to break up a confrontation between Iraqi police and about 200 local demonstrators who chanted “Yes, Yes to Saddam”.

The remains of a twisted car lay outside the two-storey station. A stone wall around the structure appeared to have borne the brunt of the blast which destroyed parts of it.

US Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Swisher told reporters at the scene that there was “some evidence” of a suicide bomber.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad said there were no casualties among US or foreign allied forces.

Ambulances and rescue workers ferried the casualties to a hospital in the town of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of the capital. The area, dominated by Iraq’s Sunni Muslims, is a focus of support for ousted president Saddam Hussein.

The bomb was the latest in a string of attacks on Iraqi police and other targets seen as cooperating with the US-led occupation. Scores of Iraqis have been killed.

US-led forces in Iraq have also come under daily attacks since the end of the war that toppled Saddam in April.

Several police targets have come under attack, including in Khalidiyah and Ramadi, before. The US-appointed police chief in Khalidiyah was killed in September.

The Iraqi police, trained by US forces, have often complained that they are not sufficiently armed or protected.

The police, along with a 40,000-strong new Iraqi army and security forces, are central to US plans to turn responsibility for security and formal sovereignty over to Iraqis by the middle of next year, ahead of the US presidential election in November.

The US military said on Saturday it would reconsider pay for the Iraqi army intended to replace Saddam’s forces, after a wave of recruits quit in protest at low pay.

Edging towards having more US allies involved on the ground in Iraq, Seoul announced on Sunday that President Roh Moo-hyun would ask parliament to approve the deployment of 3,000 South Korean troops to help rebuild the war-torn country.

Many in South Korea oppose sending more troops to Iraq, where two South Korean workers were killed last month.

South Korea has had nearly 700 engineering and medical troops serving in Iraq since May without incident. But two civilian electricians were killed in central Iraq last month, prompting the company involved to withdraw its staff of 60.