BAGHDAD, 22 August 2003 — Saddam Hussein’s feared cousin, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, has been captured. Majid, No. 5 on a US list of the 55 most wanted Iraqi fugitives, had initially been reported killed during the war in Iraq. US Central Command gave no details on when or where he was captured.

Majid was a ruthless member of Saddam’s clan who earned his nickname of “Chemical Ali” by using poison gas to kill thousands of Kurdish civilians in the village of Halabja in 1988.

He played a leading role in the violent suppression of Iraq’s Kurdish and Shiite rebels and the seven-month occupation of Kuwait which began in 1990.

The US Army also announced yesterday that a 1st Armored Division solider was killed and two were wounded by an improvised explosive device in the Karkah district of Baghdad. The attack took place late Wednesday night. The military had no other details.

As three more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the UN headquarters in Iraq yesterday — raising the death toll from Tuesday’s blast to at least 23 — the world body announced it was pulling about a third of its staff out of the country.

UN support and administrative staff, numbering about 100 out of a total workforce of 300, were being flown to Amman and Larnaca, according to Romiro Lopez da Silva, Iraq coordinator for UN humanitarian programs.

He said 86 UN staffers were seriously wounded in the attack and were being flown out of the country. He said two UN colleagues still were unaccounted for and an unknown number of people, visitors to the headquarters building, still were buried in the rubble. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians searched for bodies amid the destroyed UN offices in the Canal Hotel, said David Roath from the US Defense Department, who is overseeing the recovery efforts.

At the United Nations, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was exploring a new UN resolution that would encourage nations “to do more” in Iraq but said the United States would not surrender military control.

“Additional language in a new resolution might encourage others,” Powell told reporters following a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But Powell, in answer to questions, said there was no need to share any control.

Annan, for his part, repeated there would not be a UN force of blue helmets, or peacekeepers. But he emphasized that despite differences among Security Council members, there was a willingness to see that Iraq was stabilized.