Baghdad, Iraq ? Hospital workers say they saw the infamous Saddam Hussein henchman known as “Chemical Ali” alive in Baghdad just before the city fell, contradicting British Army claims that he had been killed in an air raid on a house in Basra days earlier.

The eyewitness reports that Ali Hassan al Majid, who ordered poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages in 1988 that killed 5,000 civilians, was at the Baghdad Nursing Hospital on April 6 or 7 is an indication of how little is known about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle, both during the war and now.

Like Saddam, who twice was declared dead by U.S. officials after airstrikes only to reportedly resurface in Baghdad, Majid, the king of spades in the U.S. deck, was reported killed in air raids, first on March 22 and then again April 5.

But two workers at the nursing hospital said a healthy Majid turned up at the hospital after the last air attack. They asked not to be identified.

Dr. Abdel Azziz al Bayaah, the hospital’s director, said Majid, Defense Minister Sultan Hashem Ahmed, an Iraqi bodyguard and some 10 non-Iraqi gunmen left the hospital the morning of April 6 or 7 after spending the night while doctors treated Ahmed and the Iraqi bodyguard.

The bodyguard had light glass shrapnel wounds on his face and chest, and during his brief treatment said the group had been driving around the city when another car drove up and shot at them, a nurse added.

One of the non-Iraqi guards also was wounded, in the buttocks, but was embarrassed and refused treatment, the nurse said. He believed the non-Iraqis to be Syrian Islamic radicals from their accents, civilian clothes and long beards.