Doha, Qatar, Apr 11: Coalition warplanes bombed a building early today believed to be occupied by Saddam Hussein's half brother, a close adviser who allegedly helped stash billions of dollars abroad for the Iraqi president. US Central Command said forces launched six satellite-guided bombs at a building near Ar Ramadi, about 95 kilometres west of Baghdad, in an attack on Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti. In a statement, the military said the 1115 IST attack was part of ``a continuing effort to degrade the Hussein regime'' and that damage assessment was ongoing. US Marine Major Brad Bartelt, a Central Command spokesman, said the building targeted today was an intelligence service operating site. Al-Tikriti was allegedly the chief organizer of a clandestine group of companies and funds handling the Iraqi leader's wealth, according to the Coalition for International Justice, a nonprofit organization based in The Hague, Netherlands, and in Washington.

He was chief of Saddam's secret police in the 1980s and then Iraq's ambassador to UN offices in Geneva for nine years. While in Geneva, he set up the Iraqi president's financial network, the organization says.

Estimates of Saddam's wealth range from US $2 billion to US $40 billion. But experts say it has been so effectively hidden from Latin America to Asia that the real amount may never be known.

Bureau Report