Baghdad, Iraq ? Saddam Hussein loyalists rioted in Baghdad, ambushed a U.S. patrol in Samarra, stormed the office of a U.S.-backed mayor in Fallujah and battled American troops in Ramadi — making it clear that Saddam’s capture has not quelled violence in Iraq.

As guerrilla attacks continued Monday night and Tuesday, the 4th Infantry Division snared a leader of the insurgency and 78 other people in a raid north of Baghdad, not far from where Saddam was captured three days earlier.

A roadside bomb wounded three American soldiers in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, and a pro-Saddam demonstration in the northern city of Mosul ended in violence, with a policeman killed and a second injured.

President Bush said Saddam deserved the “ultimate penalty” but it would be up to the people of Iraq to decide whether he should be executed. In an interview with ABC News, the president also said Iraqis were “capable of conducting the trial themselves.”

The United Nations, the Vatican and many countries worldwide — especially in Europe — oppose putting Saddam on trial before any court that could sentence him to death.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said Tuesday in Baghdad that military planners were preparing for American troops to stay in Iraq for up to two more years despite capturing the former Iraqi leader.

The 4th Infantry Division raid in the village of Abu Safa, near Samarra and about 60 miles north of Baghdad, began late Monday after insurgents in Samarra ambushed U.S. forces. The U.S. military said its troops killed 11 of the attackers, who released a flock of pigeons to signal one another that the American patrol was in range. No Americans were hurt.

By early Tuesday, U.S. troops arrested Qais Hattam, the No. 5 fugitive on the 4th Infantry’s list of “high value targets,” said Capt. Gaven Gregory of the division’s 3rd Brigade. The guerrilla leader was described as a major financier of insurgents who have been fighting the U.S.-led coalition for months.

Hattam is not on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis. Thirteen fugitives from that list remain at large.

Iraqis loot a U.S. Army supply train near Fallujah. The train came under attack Tuesday. Pro-Saddam demonstrators in Fallujah also overran and destroyed the mayor's office in response to the former Iraqi leader's capture by U.S. soldiers.

Myers, in a visit to Iraq to meet with American troops and top U.S. officials, said he expected Saddam’s capture to cause the insurgency to dwindle, but added it would take time.

“When you take this leader, who was at one time a very popular leader in this region, and you find him in a hole in the ground, that’s a pretty powerful signal that you’re on the wrong team,” Myers said.

Tuesday at the Vatican, a top cardinal said Saddam Hussein should face trial for his crimes, but stressed the Vatican’s opposition to the death penalty and criticized the U.S. military for portraying him “like a cow” having his teeth checked.

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said he felt compassion for Saddam and that the world should have been spared the images of his medical examination after his capture.

“I feel pity at seeing this destroyed man, treated like a cow having his teeth checked,” Martino said. “I have seen this man in his tragedy … and I had a sense of compassion.”

Martino said the Vatican hoped Saddam would face trial in an “appropriate” venue but didn’t elaborate on whether that should be an Iraqi court or an international tribunal. When asked about reports that Saddam could face the death penalty, Martino stressed the Vatican’s long-standing opposition to capital punishment, as well as the fact that no U.N.-backed court has the death penalty.

And in a further indication of the Vatican’s opposition to the U.S.-led war, he said: “It seems illusory to hope that it will repair the drama and damage of the defeat against humanity which war always is.”