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Baghdad: A former top official of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, and cousin of the deposed leader, has surrendered to coalition forces in Baghdad, the US military said.

General Kamal Mustafa Abdullah Sultan al-Tikriti, the number 10 on the American "Iraqi top 55 list," gave himself up on May 17 morning, US Central Command said in a statement issued from MacDill Air Force base, Florida, 'The News' reported.

Mustafa spent almost his entire career in the Republican Guard. His brother is married to Saddam's youngest daughter Hala. He was number 52 on the US list of "most wanted" figures from the ousted regime.

Sultan was the second "top 55" official to be taken into custody in recent days. On May 15, Adil Abdullah Mahdi al-Duri al-Tikriti, Baath Party regional command chairman for the Dhi Qar district near Tikrit, was apprehended, the military said.

Meanwhile, US commanders announced more arrests in their efforts to stop the lawlessness that has terrorised the capital since Saddam Hussein's overthrow, but admitted there were still hurdles in getting Iraqi police back out on patrol.

The deputy head of the coalition war command major general William Webster said US troops carried out more than 400 patrols in the previous 24 hours, as they moved to tackle the single biggest gripe of ordinary Iraqis against the US-led occupation.

US forces were now protecting 300 sites around the city, 100 more than two days before. A total of 129 people had been arrested for violations from looting to shooting at US forces, he said.

About reports that Washington was keeping units on in the city as well as sending in some 4,000 military police, Webster said, "The deployment time has always been open-ended." Webster acknowledged that US war commanders had failed to anticipate some of the reasons for the crime wave, which had gripped the capital.

"We did not expect the entire armed forces of Iraq to leave all of their equipment. We did not expect all of the police forces to go home and stay home." Webster said between 60 and 70 truckloads of ammunition were being taken out of the city every day.

"We're trying to rebuild a viable Iraqi police force. We're not there yet," said major general Buford Blount, commander of the US Army's Third Infantry Division.

Both generals stressed that the delay in getting Iraqi police back on the streets was due to the destruction of police stations across the city in the aftermath of Saddam's fall on April 9.

They said 7,000 police had reported back to work in Baghdad and 18,000 nationwide, but with only two stations reopened and wide scale damage and theft to police vehicles, only a few were actually back on the beat.

The US commanders said troops were pressing on with efforts to boost the availability of essential supplies, particularly petrol, whose scarcity in oil-rich Iraq has infuriated motorists.

Searchers at an Iraqi military firing range, 80 kms West of Baghdad, unearthed human bones and articles of clothing they say belong to a mass grave of people executed in the 1990s.

The Iraqi National Congress, a former Opposition group, asserted the bones belonged to Kuwaitis captured during the 1991 Gulf War.

Group members said a truck driver told them he witnessed the killings, but there was no physical evidence at the site to corroborate the claim.

ANI