The 64-year-old fighter, stricken with leukaemia, who befriended Saddam as a young man, supposedly cried and read the Holy Koran when he heard that his comrade had been executed early Saturday morning, a senior Baath official said.

Mr al-Douri had been nominated as the acting general secretary of the Baath party, the official said, who went by the pseudonym “Abu Abdullah”.

Mr al-Douri has had a $10 million US bounty on his head since November 2003. The grizzled hardman defied the odds, staying on the run long after Saddam was captured, hiding three years ago in Ad-Dawr, a village belonging to Mr al- Douri’s tribe.

“Abdullah” described the intricate security network that has allowed Mr
al-Douri to evade US troops: “He has about 600 men working for him, to secure his movements. He can’t stay more than a week to ten days in any one place. He has received offers for vacations in Arab and Islamic countries to go there and receive medical treatment, but he has refused because he is afraid if he gets out, the party will collapse.”

A doctor travels with him at all times and he receives blood transfusions when he needs them, “Abdullah” said. He claimed that Mr al-Douri has directed at least 150 attacks against US forces since 2003 as he
criss-crosses northern and central Iraq. The official said that the Baath party, with Mr al-Douri’s blessing, had put out feelers to the Government, through intermediaries, about ending attacks, but these preliminary contacts had centred on freeing Saddam.

A few other fighters confirmed Mr al-Douri’s central role to the Baath insurgency.

At Saddam’s tomb in al-Awja on Monday, a man who called himself a comrade of the late dictator, confirmed that Mr al-Douri had been named acting head of the Baath.

“Saddam was a strong, brave man. He had principles and the video showed who executed him was Maliki and the Mahdi Army. We will have our revenge on them,” said the man, who identified himself as Muhammad Abdel Fattah and claimed to be a senior Baath leader. “Our hearts are burning and we call Baath members in all Iraq to increase attacks against the American army and the Iraqi Government.”

Born, like Saddam, in the Tikrit district north of Baghdad, Mr al-Douri also has tribal connections in the Mosul region further north through his daughter-in-law’s family.

Not a military man by training, he was nonetheless given the honorary rank of lieutenant-general and made deputy commander of the armed forces and commander of the northern region.

Kurdish officials said that he has maintained close ties with a network of former army officers and loyalist militiamen who have been carrying out attacks across north-central Iraq.

In 1988, towards the end of an eight-year Iran-Iraq war, he formed part of the security team that put down an Iranian-backed Kurdish uprising with chemical weapons.

Times Recommends

• 'Great Schlep' may seal deal for Obama
• Hindu 'storm troopers' flex their muscles
• Ahtisaari: deserved reward for (failed) plan