AMERICAN troops in Iraq seized a shipment of 2,000 gold bars as it was being driven toward the Syrian border yesterday, prompting renewed fears in Baghdad and Washington that Saddam Hussein may have escaped the country.

The 40lb bars, worth up to £300 million, were found hidden in the back of a Mercedes lorry by soldiers carrying out a routine military checkpoint search in the border town of al-Qaim on a notorious smuggling route into Syria.

The drivers, whose nationalities were not disclosed last night, told the soldiers that they had been paid 350,000 dinars — about £200 — to pick up the lorry in Baghdad and drive it to an unnamed individual in al-Qaim. The pair said they had been told that they were hauling bronze.

The gold bars, each measuring 4 in x 5 in x 10 in, were in the custody of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and were being tested for carat weight and purity. If of good quality, they could be worth as much as £300 million.

The spectacular find, which follows the discovery of more than $1 billion in stolen cash stashed away in several of Saddam’s palaces, prompted speculation over the whereabouts of the former dictator and his sons, Uday and Qusay.

Six weeks after the collapse of Saddam’s regime, and after more than 20 of his most senior officials have been captured or killed, US officials were forced to concede that few people apart from Saddam and his immediate family still had the wealth, contacts and power to order the movement of so much gold.

Most of the cash stolen from Iraq’s Central Bank by Qusay on the eve of the war was found in Baghdad, and the fact that the gold was heading for Syria raises the possibility that the most senior members of Saddam’s regime have left Iraq and are now seeking to fund their exile.

President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, each accused Damascus last month of harbouring senior Baath party officials. But no suggestions have been made that Saddam himself has found refuge in Syria, a politically incendiary move that President Assad would be unlikely to condone.

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