Saddam arrested? (updated: Yes!)

See here:

Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Iraq, according to unconfirmed reports.

Members of the Iraqi Governing Council and Kurdish officials said he had been captured in his ancestral hometown of Tikrit, north of the capital Baghdad.

Also here, here, and here.

(Updated at 11.25 AM.) Fox News is giving ‘US officials’ as its source for the story:

TEHRAN, Iran – Saddam Hussein…, the former Iraqi dictator and most-wanted figure by the U.S.-led coalition, has been captured in Iraq, U.S. officials told Fox News.

Multiple high-level sources told Fox News they are almost certain that coalition troops captured the former Iraqi leader in a raid designed to net him in his hometown of Tikrit.

The officials said the former leader, who during his rule slept in lush palaces while many ordinary Iraqis lived in poverty, was found “cowering” in a basement in a home raided by coalition soldiers. The sources said coalition forces were “testing” the person believed to be Saddam to confirm his identity.

News of the potential capture made its way around Iraq like wildfire, with Iraqis in Tikrit and the capital city, Baghdad, celebrating the news by firing guns into the air.

Cowering in a basement!

(Updated again at 11.40 AM.) Of the Iraqi blogs I’ve looked at, so far only Sam at Hammorabi has posted on this:

It is a victory for the victims of his regime and the righteous people of Iraq and the WORLD at large.

BBC world has been showing big celebrations live from Baghdad including celebratory gun fires.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR (2004) WITHOUT THE TYRANT!
It is a VICTORY TO ALL OF US.

Sam is promising updates.

(Updated at 11.50 AM.) The Guardian now has Tony Blair confirming that the man captured is Saddam. The text of the Beeb report, with which I started, keeps being amended, so don’t blame me that my excerpt is now only approximate.

(Final update at 12.50 PM.) Paul Bremer: ‘Ladies and gentlemen – we got him!’ – followed by jubilant applause from the press conference. My own tuppenceworth: yeeeeeeeeeehah!

(Correction: this is the final update – at 1.05 PM.) You can see the video of the Bremer press conference if you go here: scroll down a bit for the Saddam mugshot on the right. How long before those ‘Yes, but…’s? No time at all.

(Obliged to correct myself again – at 3.45 PM.) The BBC video I’ve linked to now no longer shows the beginning of the Bremer press conference, but goes straight to the pictures of Saddam undergoing medical examination. Now, why? It couldn’t be that ‘Ladies and gentlemen – we got him!’, followed by jubilant applause, was somehow not kosher by them? It surely couldn’t.