London: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is hiding chemical and biological weapons in hospitals and mosques to thwart the UN inspection mission to Baghdad.

Saddam Hussein was moving documents and materials from weapons laboratories and a ballistic-missile site into hospitals, schools and mosques in the Northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, said Ayad Alawi, the leader of Iraqi National Accord (INA), an Opposition group close to the regime.

The concealment operation was being co-ordinated by Brig Gen Walid al-Nasri, a trusted aide from Saddam's home region of Tikrit who reports directly to Qusay Hussein, Saddam's second son and head of his powerful State Security Organisation, Alawi was quoted by a media report as saying.

Saddam was building underground vaults to hide chemical and biological weapons laboratories, Adnan al-Haideri, an Iraqi civil engineer who defected to US last year claimed, the report said.

Giving credence to al-Haideri's claims were US spy planes, fitted with a device that detects underground voids, such as bunkers and tunnels, through variations in the earth's gravitational field.

The device found a void where al-Haideri said there was a subterranean nerve-agent laboratory.

PTI