CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – Iraqi officials said yesterday that Syrian authorities captured Saddam Hussein’s half brother in Syria and handed him over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture. Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who was also a former adviser suspected of financing insurgents after US troops ousted the former dictator, was captured in Hasakah in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border, two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The officials did not specify when al-Hassan was captured, only saying he was detained following the February 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon.

Syria has come under intense scrutiny following Hariri’s death, with many in Lebanon blaming Damascus and Beirut’s pro-Syrian Government for the killing.

The United States and France also called on Damascus to withdraw 15,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon following Hariri’s death.

Washington has long accused Syria of harbouring and aiding former members of Saddam’s toppled Baathist regime suspected of involvement in the deadly insurgency against US-led forces in Iraq.

“The capture appeared to be a goodwill gesture by the Syrians to show that they are co-operating,” one official told the AP.

Earlier yesterday in Baghdad, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s office had said al-Hassan’s arrest “shows the determination of the Iraqi government to chase and detain all criminals who carried out massacres and whose hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people, then bring them to justice to face the right punishment”.

Two US soldiers were killed yesterday and another two were wounded after they were apparently ambushed in southeast Baghdad with a bomb followed by rifle fire. Their names were withheld pending notification of next of kin, the military said.

It was the third American military death over the weekend. The US command announced a Marine was killed Saturday during military operations in central Babil province.

South of Baghdad, Iraqi forces found four headless bodies dumped on a farm, and a fifth headless corpse in the capital, officials said. A bomb exploded inside police headquarters in the northern town of Hammam Alil, killing five people.

Police used explosives to blow up a car bomb in central Baghdad’s Kahramanah square. The double blast shook neighbouring buildings. Security forces often blow up such bombs on site instead of defusing them.

Al-Hassan was No 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis released by US authorities after troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, and one of only 12 remaining at large. Washington had put a US$1-million bounty on his head.