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Rumors about his suicide appear to be false. He tried to turn himself into US forces, but they refused to accept him.
Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, who denied to the end the presence of US forces in Baghdad, was turned down by US troops after trying to turn himself in, said the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing a Kurdish official.
Sahhaf had been at his aunt's house in Baghdad for the past four days and wanted US troops to arrest him so that "they can protect him" but they refused since he was not on their "most wanted" deck of playing cards, said the paper, citing Adel Murad of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Mr Murad said Sahhaf was in Mosul before going to Baghdad and that some PUK partisans saw him in the northern city and that he even asked some of them to intervene on his behalf with US troops, but "we told him that we didn't want to be party to this matter", the paper added.
The Kurdish official told the paper that US troops regularly patrolled near Sahhaf's hideout on Palestine Street in the Iraqi capital and that he sent some of his relatives to inform them of his wish to surrender, but they turned him down.
"Negotiations are still going on to hand him over to them," said Mr Murad.
The Portuguese daily Diario de Noticias said on Thursday that a family claiming to be sheltering Sahhaf, reportedly in the women's section of a home in a poor neighbourhood of Baghdad, had been in contact with two Portuguese journalists seeking their help in approaching US forces.
Sahhaf's daily briefings during the US-led war on Iraq made him a world celebrity. He vanished when US forces entered central Baghdad and may be dead but his words are still very much alive on the web.
Among them: "My feelings, as usual, we will slaughter them all."
"Our initial assessment is that they will all die."
Low-cost Irish airline Ryanair has used his photograph in a recent advertisement campaign in the British press.
Even Sahhaf's "archenemy" US President George Bush said in a recent interview with NBC television that he enjoyed Sahhaf's briefings so much that he used to interrupt some of his meetings just to watch him.
AFP
Iraq's former information minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf, who denied to the end the presence of US forces in Baghdad, was turned down by US troops after trying to turn himself in, said the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing a Kurdish official.
Sahhaf had been at his aunt's house in Baghdad for the past four days and wanted US troops to arrest him so that "they can protect him" but they refused since he was not on their "most wanted" deck of playing cards, said the paper, citing Adel Murad of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Mr Murad said Sahhaf was in Mosul before going to Baghdad and that some PUK partisans saw him in the northern city and that he even asked some of them to intervene on his behalf with US troops, but "we told him that we didn't want to be party to this matter", the paper added.
The Kurdish official told the paper that US troops regularly patrolled near Sahhaf's hideout on Palestine Street in the Iraqi capital and that he sent some of his relatives to inform them of his wish to surrender, but they turned him down.
"Negotiations are still going on to hand him over to them," said Mr Murad.
The Portuguese daily Diario de Noticias said on Thursday that a family claiming to be sheltering Sahhaf, reportedly in the women's section of a home in a poor neighbourhood of Baghdad, had been in contact with two Portuguese journalists seeking their help in approaching US forces.
Sahhaf's daily briefings during the US-led war on Iraq made him a world celebrity. He vanished when US forces entered central Baghdad and may be dead but his words are still very much alive on the web.
Among them: "My feelings, as usual, we will slaughter them all."
"Our initial assessment is that they will all die."
Low-cost Irish airline Ryanair has used his photograph in a recent advertisement campaign in the British press.
Even Sahhaf's "archenemy" US President George Bush said in a recent interview with NBC television that he enjoyed Sahhaf's briefings so much that he used to interrupt some of his meetings just to watch him.
AFP
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