BAGHDAD, 12 June 2003 — US-led forces arrested two more senior members of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime but suffered new casualties from a resistance that American officials said will take time to root out.

A US soldier was killed and another critically wounded Tuesday in Baghdad in an attack that came shortly after US officials authorized the spending of $100 million to rebuild the country’s battered infrastructure.

While the Americans acknowledge they have no clue as to the fate of Saddam two months after his ouster, the US Central Command announced yesterday the capture of two more men on the “Top 55” list of wanted Iraqis. Centcom said coalition troops had arrested Latif Nusayyif Al-Jasim Al-Dulaymi, a one-time information minister and deputy secretary of the Baath Military Bureau. He was number 18 on the list.

The other Iraqi taken into custody, number 53, was identified as Brig. Gen. Husayn Al-Awadi, described as the former Baath Party chair in the Ninawa region and a brigadier general in the Chemical Corps.

Centcom gave no details on the arrests of the two men, which brought to 30 the number of wanted Iraqi officials captured since the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

US forces continued to be plagued by hit-and-run raids, with a paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne Division killed Tuesday by a rocket-propelled grenade fired at a weapons collection point in Baghdad.

Another soldier was wounded and in critical condition when two men jumped out of a van and fired two rocket-propelled grenades, a Centcom statement said.

More than 40 US servicemen have been reported dead in combat or accidents since May 1, when US President George W. Bush declared major operations over. A total of 137 died in the full combat phase of the war.

In an effort to curb the continuing attacks, US Army troops swept through an area north of Baghdad for a second day, seizing weapons and arresting 397 people suspected of being Baath Party loyalists or militiamen.

US officials first played down the attacks as the work of isolated criminals, terrorist or renegade elements of the old Baath regime. But they now concede they are facing some level of organized resistance.

“I would say the remnants of the Iraqi regime — the Fedayeen Saddam and Baathists and very likely the special Republican Guard — are still there,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday.