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Chemical Ali may be alive: US

LONDON: US officials now say they are not so sure that a coalition air strike killed “Chemical Ali”, one of Iraq’s most notorious officials.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said interrogations of Iraqi prisoners indicated Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, might be alive.

Myers and US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld had said on April 7 they believed an air strike on a house in southern Iraq had killed al-Majid. They showed reporters a video of laser-guided bombs obliterating the house where a tipster told coalition forces al-Majid was staying.

“We believe that the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end. To Iraqis who have suffered at his hand, particularly in the last few weeks in that southern part of the country, he will never again terrorise you or your families,” Rumsfeld said at the time.

A British officer in Basra, Major Andrew Jackson, also said on that day that a body believed to be al-Majid was found in the rubble after the air strike. Myers and Rumsfeld, speaking after briefing members of Congress, did not elaborate on what they called “speculation” that al-Majid may have survived.

Al-Majid once ran Iraq’s armed forces. His opponents called him “Chemical Ali” for his role in 1988 chemical weapons attacks that killed thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq.

He has also been linked to the bloody crackdown on Shiites in southern Iraq after their uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. He was governor of Kuwait during Iraq’s seven-month occupation of its neighbour in 1990-1991 an occupation that ended with Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf War.

Al-Majid was a warrant officer and motorcycle messenger in the army before Saddam’s Baath party led a coup in 1968. He was promoted to general and served as defence minister from 1991-95, as well as a regional party leader.—LDT

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