BAGHDAD, Feb 27: Security forces in Iraq have captured Saddam Hussein's half-brother, one of the most wanted men in the country and the first top-level Baath Party member to be detained in more than a year.

Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, an intelligence chief and one-time adviser to the former president, was number 36 on the US military's list of the 55 most-wanted people in Iraq.

Iraq's government announced Ibrahim's capture in a statement, but did not tell details. Ibrahim, who had a $1 million bounty on his head, is the first person on the list to be detained since February 2004, when number 41, Mohammad Zimam al-Sadun, was taken into custody.

Ibrahim's brothers Watban and Barzan - numbers 37 and 38 in a US pack of cards - were seized in April 2003 and are being held at a US military facility on the outskirts of Baghdad.

They are due to be tried in the coming months, part of a group of 12, including Saddam, who will be the first people to go before the country's special tribunal.

EIGHT KILLED: A bomb near the northern city of Mosul on Sunday killed eight and injured at least two more, the US military said. Several of the dead were Iraqi security guards, police said. -Reuters