The fate of Saddam Hussein's right-hand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri was shrouded in confusion Sunday, as Iraqi officials appeared to backtrack on earlier claims he had been captured.
Despite abundant details provided by the Iraqi national guard on the circumstances of his capture in his hometown of Ad-Dawr, near Tikrit, there was little or no evidence to support the claim.
The US military stressed it was unlikely such an operation would have been carried out without its knowledge, and even top Iraqi officials denied the most wanted fugitive from the former regime had been netted.
"Iraqi national guards and US forces obtained intelligence that Ibrahim was in Ad-Dawr clinic," guard commander, Colonel Abdullah Juburi, had said in Tikrit.
"They surrounded the area and, as he was leaving the clinic, they arrested him."
Several Iraqi officials, including an interior ministry spokesman and minister without portfolio Qassem Daoud, confirmed the reports, elaborating on the deadly clashes which reportedly pitted the national guard against armed supporters of the loyal Saddam henchman.
But the announcements which appeared to bring an 18-month manhunt to a glorious end for Iraq's fledgling security forces took a farcical twist when the same Iraqi officials abruptly stopped answering their phones.
"Our forces did not take part in any operation and did not capture Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri and we do not have any information concerning the subject," said Major General Ahmed Khalaf Salman, who is national guard commander for the central region where the capture reportedly took place.
"No division took part," he added.
Another national guard commander in Tikrit earlier said that Ibrahim had been captured in the clinic where the leukemic 62-year-old was supposed to have had a blood transfusion.
For his part, Doctor Nashwan Mohammed Sabar at the Tikrit General hospital said the ailing Ibrahim had not been brought there.
At the Ad Dawr clinic, nurses Hassan Mohammed al-Duri and Shema Kazem Alwan said: "We have never seen Izzat Ibrahim."
Asked about the flurry of denials, interior ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdelrahman, who had previously confirmed the arrest and provided abundant details about its circumstances, said: "Call the defense ministry because these are the people who told us this story."
The US military said it did not have custody of Ibrahim, adding its troops were not involved in any such operation and no Iraqi official had informed any American officials of his arrest.
Rear Admiral Greg Slavonic said this would have been unusual if he had been captured due to the high degree of cooperation between US and Iraqi forces.
He said there was no record of any US tanks or aircraft supporting the Iraqi operation to capture Ibrahim, despite claims by an interior ministry spokesman and a national guard commander that US forces had taken part.
Several Iraqi officials appearing on Arab television networks had insisted Ibrahim was in the custody of the national guard, claiming this operation was a huge boost for the country's embattled security apparatus.
Saddam's longtime deputy, Ibrahim is ranked number six in the deck of cards of most wanted officials issued after last year's US-led invasion.
His capture would have been the most high-profile coup for the coalition in Iraq since the announcement on December 13 of the capture of Saddam, who was found hiding in a hole on a farm in the same village of Ad-Dawr.
Washington has accused him of using Saddam's hidden stashes of hard currency to buy jobless Iraqis to serve as the insurgency's footsoldiers, although top US brass has since reckoned his illness was incompatible with a lead role in the insurgency.
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