Baghdad, Iraq ? U.S. forces in Iraq have captured a senior and trusted aide to former President Saddam Hussein. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti is the person most wanted by the U.S. government after Saddam and his two sons, U.S. military officials said Wednesday.

The seizure of Mahmud could provide a much-needed break for U.S. soldiers and intelligence operatives searching for Saddam and his sons. Mahmud, who was the ace of diamonds on a deck of 55 playing cards depicting former Iraqi officials sought by the United States, is regarded by U.S. military and intelligence officials as one of the people most likely to know whether the former president still is alive, and if so, where he may be hiding. He also is believed to possess details about Iraq’s alleged possession of chemical and biological weapons.

U.S. troops continued Wednesday to come under fire in Baghdad and other cities surrounding the capital. One U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a shooting outside a propane gas station they were guarding in south Baghdad. A few hours earlier, U.S. military police opened fire on a group of former Iraqi soldiers who were hurling rocks outside the gates of the U.S. occupation authority headquarters, killing two demonstrators in the most violent protest in the capital since U.S. troops arrived.

Trusted aide

Mahmud, a distant cousin of Saddam, was one of the very few people whom the former president is believed to have trusted completely. Frequently pictured at Saddam’s side, Mahmud controlled access to Saddam and was intimately familiar with his activities and his whereabouts at any given time. U.S. officials believe only Saddam’s two sons, Odai and Qusay, could see the former president without going through Mahmud.

Mahmud also served as Saddam’s top security adviser, and would have had access to most — if not all — of the government’s closely guarded secrets, including its weapons programs, U.S. officials said.

A British government dossier on top Iraqi officials said Mahmud, a noncommissioned officer who was selected by Saddam from his corps of bodyguards to become his top aide and later promoted to lieutenant general, “is regarded by some as the real number two figure in the Iraqi leadership.”

Mahmud was seized near Tikrit, the area from which he and Saddam hail, located about 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, U.S. military officials said Wednesday night. Officials here refused to detail the circumstances of his capture and it was not immediately clear whether it was linked to the Wednesday raid of two farmhouses near Tikrit.

Raid nets 50 Iraqis

A U.S. Army general said soldiers captured one of Saddam’s bodyguards during the raid and as many as 50 other people believed to be members of Saddam’s security and intelligence services, the elite Special Republican Guard or Baath Party paramilitary groups loyal to the former president.

The soldiers also found $8.5 million in U.S. currency, more than $200,000 worth of Iraqi bank notes and an undetermined amount of British pounds and euros, said Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division. He said the troops also found more than $1 million worth of gems and jewels.

Odierno said he didn’t know whether the cash was intended to pay bounties for attacks on U.S. troops or to fund the Saddam loyalists while in hiding. Russian-made night vision goggles, sniper rifles, uniforms and equipment that belonged to Saddam’s personal guard were also found at the sites as well, Odierno said.

The raid was part of a broad but controversial military operation aimed at capturing Baath party militiamen, who have been blamed for a series of attacks on U.S. troops across central Iraq. More than 400 people have been arrested since the operation, dubbed Desert Scorpion, began Sunday. Many Iraqis have complained that U.S. troops have been overly aggressive.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged “a little debate” under way in the U.S. government over the degree to which the resistance is centrally organized.

“I don’t know anyone who is persuaded — and has a real strong conviction — that there is anything approximating a national or a regional organization that is energizing and motivating these attacks,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. But he expressed the view that “small elements” of up to 20 loyalists had coalesced to plan and finance attacks on U.S. forces.

Soldier killed

The latest act of violence that U.S. military officials attribute to Saddam loyalists was Wednesday’s shooting of two soldiers outside the propane station. Details of the incident varied. A U.S. Army spokesman said one soldier was killed and another wounded when gunmen walked up to a squad of troops guarding the station. But an employee at the station, Salam Mohammed, said a sole gunman fired at the soldiers from a moving car.

The name of the slain soldier was not immediately released. The soldier was the second American killed this week in Baghdad. Since major combat was declared over by the Pentagon on May 1, about 50 U.S. military personnel have died from attacks or accidents in Iraq.