IRAQ U.S. officials cast doubt on capture

Iraqi officials said 70 of the fugitive's supporters were killed in the firefight.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi officials said Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a top deputy to former President Saddam Hussein and one of the U.S. military's two most-wanted fugitives in Iraq, was captured in a raid Sunday conducted by Iraqi security forces.
But U.S. military officials cast doubt on the claim, saying al-Douri was not in the custody of U.S.-led multinational forces.
Iraq's two senior government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said al-Douri was apprehended during a raid of a health clinic in Dawr, a hamlet south of Tikrit that is his hometown and the place where Saddam was discovered hiding in a hole in December.
The officials said the operation, led by Iraqi National Guard forces, sparked a bloody firefight with al-Douri's supporters that resulted in 70 deaths and 80 people arrested.
"It's him," one of the senior officials said. "We've got Izzat Douri."
Two Cabinet ministers publicly confirmed the capture. Minister of State Qasim Daoud announced al-Douri's arrest at a news conference in Kuwait and said 150 people with him had either been killed or arrested.
"We had received information that he was admitted to a hospital near Tikrit, or let us say a clinic, to have blood transfusion," Defense Ministry spokesman Saleh Sarhan told Al-Hurra, a U.S.-funded, Arabic-language television station.
"As soon as we received this information, the forces were able to plan a major operation to arrest him."
Skepticism
U.S. military officials were skeptical of the claim. Maj. Neal O'Brien, the public affairs officer for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division, which is stationed in Tikrit and supervises Iraqi National Guard operations in the area, said he could not confirm that al-Douri had been captured.
In Baghdad, the U.S. military command issued a one-sentence statement saying he was not being held by U.S.-led forces.
It is highly unusual for National Guard units in the area of Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, to conduct operations without U.S. forces to provide backup. O'Brien said he was not aware of any joint operations Sunday.
A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad said it would be a breach of standard procedures for a National Guard operation to be conducted without the involvement or, at the very least, the knowledge of U.S. commanders in the area. It is even more unusual for U.S. officials not to know about a raid that involved 70 fatalities and 80 arrests.
"It doesn't sound accurate," the senior official said.
U.S. casualties
Meanwhile, a mortar barrage Sunday evening hit a U.S. base on the western edge of Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding 16 others, one critically, Maj. Richard Spiegel of the Army's 13th Corps Support Command said.
The soldiers killed and wounded all belonged to the 13th Corps Support, which oversees distribution of fuel, food and water to U.S. forces.
As of Friday, 976 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Defense Department.