"BAGHDAD, April 17 -- U.S. Special Operations troops today captured a half-brother of Saddam Hussein who formerly served as the deposed president's intelligence chief and his money manager in Switzerland and was one of the most-wanted members of Iraq's former leadership, U.S. military officials said.

Acting on a tip from Iraqis, the soldiers raided a house in Baghdad in the early morning darkness and detained Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, a former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar. Brooks described Hasan as "an adviser to the former regime leader with extensive knowledge of the regime's inner working."

Outside experts said that Hasan, 53, had a falling-out with Hussein in recent years, but that his arrest could nonetheless provide the United States with an intelligence bonanza.

Looting that has stripped much of the city since the Hussein government crumbled on April 9 flared again today. In one incident, thieves blew open a Baghdad bank vault and lowered children inside to remove cash. U.S. soldiers arrived and broke up the theft, taking away $4 million in U.S. currency for safekeeping.

In a bid for authority in the leaderless capital, Mohammed Mohsen Zubaidi, a member of the exile-dominated Iraqi National Congress, proclaimed today that he had been chosen as the chief of a council of religious clerics and academics who intend to run Baghdad. Zubaidi, who has been living in the United States, said the council would work with the U.S. military to restore electricity, improve the supply of cooking gas and set up a radio station.

He did not explain how the council was formed, how its members were selected or how it plans to coexist with U.S. soldiers and civilians who intend to govern the country until an interim administration is selected.

Resistance Persists

North of Baghdad, scattered armed resistance continued. The U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, which only recently entered Iraq, clashed with a group of holdout Iraqi troops at an airfield while attempting to secure the area, Brooks said. A brief battle ensued in which American soldiers killed several Iraqis, destroyed several T-72 tanks and captured more then 100 Iraqi fighters.

But elsewhere, U.S. forces were standing down. The aircraft carrier USS Constellation left the Persian Gulf, a day after another carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, sailed for its home port, Yokosuka, Japan.

In Paris, international archaeological experts attending a meeting organized by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said the looting of thousands of artifacts from Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities last week appeared to have been an organized operation. The experts, who have been in contact with directors at the museum, said some of the thieves had keys to the building's vaults and were able to take pieces from safes.

Brooks gave few details on how U.S. troops located Hasan, other than to say that "information provided by some Iraqis . . . facilitated the capture." U.S. officials had earlier thought that he was killed by airstrikes that destroyed one of his homes west of Baghdad earlier this month.

Hasan is the second of Hussein's three half-brothers to have been apprehended in recent days. All three worked with the deposed leader closely in his political career.

Watban Ibrahim Hasan, who once served as Iraq's interior minister and oversaw a campaign to snuff out resistance by Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991, was earlier detained in northern Iraq while trying to flee to neighboring Syria. The third half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, reportedly took refuge in Syria.

The youngest of the half-brothers, Hasan was once a fare collector on a bus. Now 53, he is linked to Hussein through marriage as well as parentage -- Hasan's daughter and Hussein's son Uday married in 1993, but the couple parted ways soon after.

Hasan took part in the 1968 coup that brought Hussein's Baath Party to power and later was appointed director of Iraq's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. During his years in that organization, intelligence experts say, he expanded Iraq's intelligence and terror operations overseas, and ordered agents to carry out dozens of operations against Iraqi dissidents in Europe and the Arab world.

1983 Massacre

Witnesses have said he was present in Kirkuk when as many as 8,000 male members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe were massacred in 1983.

That year, Hussein demoted Hasan for reasons that are not known. By the end of the 1980s, however, he was back in favor and was named Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. According to Charles A. Forrest, executive director of the International Campaign to Indict Iraqi War Criminals, or Indict, a London-based group, Hasan used his years in Geneva to help set up a network of front companies to purchase weapons and acquire foreign assets.

He appears also to have been a bagman for Hussein, said Forrest. He kept control over accounts and set up channels through which money was distributed around the world. His knowledge of these operations might be invaluable, analysts said, because many transactions were never put on paper.

In recent years, relations between Hussein and Hasan appear to have cooled, in part because of the breakup of their children's marriage.

Hasan left Geneva in September 1998 but continued to travel back and forth between Baghdad and Geneva, according to a December 2001 report by the financial investigating firm Kroll, working for Indict. There were rumors that his estrangement from Hussein might lead him to defect.

He has held no public office since returning to Baghdad, and by some accounts has been under virtual house arrest for more than a year.

Indict has filed a genocide case against him in Switzerland concerning the 1983 Kurdish deaths. Earlier this week, Kurds found mass graves outside the city of Kirkuk holding about 1,600 bodies. Forrest said that it seemed likely the graves were connected to the massacre of the Barzani tribe.

Describing the aftermath of the arrest, Brooks said today: "We're currently asking a number of questions, of course treating him properly, but finding out whatever information we can as a result of this capture. What real details he has, we will see as he's questioned over the coming days. And we believe there may be some additional information that comes that may point us in other directions about exactly how the regime worked."

While U.S. forces mount raids against people close to Hussein, the streets of Baghdad continue to be chaotic. The lack of traffic policemen and traffic lights -- electricity service still has not been restored -- has made most large intersections dangerous free-for-alls.

New looting broke out today. In one of the most brazen assaults, thieves used explosives to blow a small hole in the vault of a branch of the Rasheed Bank. They then lowered children into the hole to scoop up fistfuls of U.S. dollars.

As word spread that the robbery was underway, hundreds of Iraqis rushed to the bank, saying they had accounts there, and demanding that the thieves give them cash. A riot broke out. U.S. troops eventually arrived, broke up the melee, arrested 12 people inside the bank and recovered $4 million from the thieves.

Hundreds of people converged on the city's fairgrounds, for the fourth day in a row, to haul away sacks of sugar and tea that were stored in cavernous exhibition halls and were meant for distribution by the old government as food rations. Although a contingent of U.S. soldiers was stationed less than a block away, they did not intervene.

Elsewhere in the city, outraged residents set up roadblocks to seize what they deemed to be looted food, in some cases grabbing 110-pound sacks of sugar from people who had just purchased them for 30 cents apiece from the thieves.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the overall commander of U.S. forces, said during a visit to Kuwait that looting has been decreasing and it would continue to decline "because the Iraqis are now stepping up and controlling the problems for themselves."

Fighting Over Food

But in some cases, it is not always the sort of control U.S. forces want. In Tikrit, Hussein's home town, Marines had to break up violent clashes when club-wielding members of the former ruler's clan attacked people from outlying villages coming to warehouses in search of food.

U.S. troops have been increasing their joint patrols with Iraqi police. After starting with just five Iraqi officers Tuesday, the Marines expect to be patrolling the city with a total of 200 police officers by the weekend, Marine spokesman Capt. Joseph Plenzler said.

Among the tasks of the joint patrols is to stop every sanitation truck, ambulance, firetruck and other public vehicle they see moving around town to determine whether it is stolen. The patrols confiscate the vehicles if the drivers do not have proper identification, and already have "secured" more than 1,000 water tank trucks.

The Marines hope to restore electric power on a rolling basis to all of Baghdad within three or four days, Plenzler said, so that every part of the city will have electricity for at least eight hours. Repairs to the power plant serving southern Baghdad should allow it to start operating by Friday, and two smaller plants should follow within two days, he said." (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, The Washington Post, April 18, 2003).