WASHINGTON, 15 December 2003 — As US forces claimed they were led to Saddam’s hiding place by someone “close to him”, members of his real family wept at news of his capture.

According to the parents of their schoolmates, Saddam’s grandchildren cried at their exclusive private school in Jordan.“When news of Saddam’s capture became known, school officials gathered the children in the principal’s office at both schools and informed them of what had happened and the children broke down in tears,” one parent said.

“The children were shielded from the rest of their schoolmates until their drivers came and took them home to be with their mothers.”

Earlier this year, Saddam’s daughters Raghad and Rana and their nine children were granted refuge in Jordan, where they live in a former palace of King Abdallah II’s late father, King Hussein, on a hill in the east of the capital, Amman.

Their children attend two exclusive private schools in Jordan, where the families have kept a low profile since arriving in the kingdom from Syria.

A correspondent with the Dubai-based Arab satellite television, Al-Arabiya, said he had spoken with Raghad by telephone. “She was crying and kept on repeating ‘I wished I had never lived to this day’,” said the correspondent.

On Aug. 8, 1995, the two women, their husbands, Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan Al-Majid, and his brother, Col. Saddam Kamel, along with some 30 , members of the Majid family, defected to Jordan where they revealed details of Iraq’s clandestine weapons of mass destruction program to UN inspectors.

But the Kamel brothers were killed in February 1996 on orders from Saddam who had lured them back home with a promise of an amnesty. Saddam’s two sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed last July in a firefight with US forces in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, after being betrayed by the owner of a villa where they had stayed. Last month, reports suggested Saddam’s wife, Sajida Khairallah Telfah, was living in Yemen, with their third daughter, Hala. His second wife, Samira Shahbandar, lives in Beirut, with Saddam’s third son, 21-year-old Ali.

The Sunday Times yesterday said Saddam’s second wife, who has changed her name and started a “new life”, claimed the former Iraqi leader telephoned her at least once a week or else wrote to her. Yesterday a flurry of unconfirmed reports said Saddam’s second wife had provided US forces with information about his whereabouts.

In Tikrit, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno said that over the last 10 days soldiers from 4th Infantry Division had questioned up to 10 members of families “close to Saddam”. He said: “Finally we got the ultimate information from one of these individuals.”