BAGHDAD, Sept. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi authorities claimed Sunday to have captured Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the most wanted aide of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but confusion was flying over whether the Saddam top aide was arrested.

    "Iraq's national guardsmen backed by US troops have captured al-Douri in Tikrit area depending on reliable intelligence," State Minister for Provinces Affairs Wael Abdul Latief told the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television.

    During the capture operation, about 70 of al-Douri's supporterswere killed and 80 others arrested, the minister said.

    Abdul Latief confirmed that a blood test was being conducted for al-Douri.

    He said about 150 militants tried to rescue al-Douri after he was captured, but their attempt ended in vain.

    Al-Douri was treated in a clinic near Tikrit, some 180 km northof Baghdad and the hometown of former President Saddam Hussein, Abdul Latief said.

    However, there have been conflicting official remarks on al-Douri's arrest.

    Iraq's information officials told the press Sunday that al-Douri was seized while receiving medical treatment at a clinic near his hometown of Adwar, north of Baghdad, and that DNA tests were under way to confirm his identity. Al-Douri reportedly suffers from leukemia and needs blood transfusions.

    "We are sure he is Izzat Ibrahim," a top information official said. "He was arrested in a clinic in Makhoul near Tikrit and Adwar and 60 percent of the DNA test has finished."

    A Defense Ministry spokesman, Saleh Sarhan, also said al-Douri had been captured.

    But Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan later said in an interview with Lebanon's Al Hayat-LBC television that reports thatIzzat Ibrahim was captured were "baseless."

    "They are baseless ... There were rumors that Izzat al-Douri orsomeone who resembles him was in that position but we don't have any information on Izzat specifically," he said.

    Al-Douri ranked the sixth in a deck of cards of most-wanted figures issued by the United States following the US-led invasion of Iraq in spring 2003.

    With a 10-million-US-dollar bounty on his head, al-Douri was accused by the United States of financing insurgency in the war-ravaged country.

    The 62-year-old al-Douri, Saddam's right-hand man and vice chairman of the Baath Party's Revolutionary Command Council, was the highest-ranking figure still at large prior to his capture.

    Relationship between Saddam and al-Douri went back to nearly four decades, when the two men were believed to be leading plotters of the 1968 coup which sent the Baath Party to power in Iraq.

    Ever since, al-Douri worked as one of Saddam's top aides and most trusted confidant.

    His daughter was briefly married to Saddam's elder son Uday, who was killed by US forces in July last year. Enditem