Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Jamal Mustafa Sultan, was reported to have been apprehended in Damascus yesterday.
The claim was made by Mr Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who said that Sultan would be brought to Iraq and handed over to US custody. Sultan is the nine of clubs on the US list of 55 most wanted Iraqis.
Meanwhile, the first food aid arrived in Baghdad yesterday after a perilous four-day journey while US forces announced they would reopen Baghdad Airport to humanitarian flights in the next few days. One month after the start of the war, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that Iraq could break out in violence against the US occupation unless people started getting relief from a worsening situation.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said a 50-truck aid convoy carrying 1,400 metric tonnes of wheat flour was being unloaded under armed guard after finally arriving in Baghdad following a four-day trip during which it reportedly came under attack.
A WFP spokesman, Mr Maarten Roest, said in Amman that there had been "unconfirmed reports that the convoy was attacked while at Ramadi" north of Baghdad, but no one was injured and none of the food was missing when it finally reached the Iraqi capital.
WFP staff will start distributing the wheat flour in May.
The difficulties of transporting aid by road in the largely lawless country could soon be eased after Maj Gen Buford Blount of the US announced that Baghdad's airport was expected to reopen for humanitarian flights within a week.
An ICRC spokesman, Mr Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, said the relief effort in Iraq was at a vital juncture.
"We are at a very crucial crossroads. Our assessment is that if we don't solve things fast it can get real bad," he said, adding "there could easily be violence" against US forces.
With hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims exercising their new-found freedom by gathering in the holy city of Karbala for a pilgrimage that could become a focus for opposition to the US, Mr Chalabi dismissed suggestions that reawakened religious fervour in Iraq would endanger the interim administration.
"There is a role for the Islamic religious parties, but they are not going to be forcing any agenda or forcing a theocracy on the Iraqi people," he said.
Mr Chalabi was at the centre of a security scare yesterday when shots were fired at his Baghdad compound, but he denied it had been an assassination attempt.
In the United States, seven former prisoners of war who were freed by soldiers battling their way towards the city of Tikrit on April 13th were greeted by crowds chanting "USA! USA!", as their aircraft from Germany landed at Fort Bliss, Texas.
President George Bush said yesterday that he saw "positive signs" that Syria was co-operating with his call not to harbour fleeing leaders of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.
"I'm confident the Syrian government has heard us, and I believe it when they say they want to co-operate with us," he said in Texas.