DUBAI, April 29: A previously unknown Iraqi group opposed to the US presence said on Tuesday former president Saddam Hussein was to deliver a message to his country within three days.

“President Saddam Hussein was not killed. He is still alive. He is going to address a message to Iraqis and to the (Arab) nation within 72 hours,” the group calling itself Iraqi Resistance and Liberation said in a letter published by the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

The letter said Saddam “has come across evidence that some Iraqi officials had long been involved with American and British intelligence.”

The mysterious organization stressed it was not “the remnants of the (ousted) Iraqi government,” despite comments similar to those made by the regime, particularly information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, before US troops rolled into central Baghdad on April 9.

The group denounced what it called “a disinformation campaign” by the United States to hide losses at the hands of the “courageous resistance.”

The organization claimed US forces in Iraq have suffered 1,300 deaths and more than 3,000 wounded and that British troops have suffered 211 deaths.

The US Defense Department says 137 US military personnel have been killed in the Iraqi conflict. The British say 31 of their troops have died.

Al-Quds al-Arabi is edited by Abdul Bari Atwan, a Palestinian known for his pro-Saddam sympathies. —AFP