"We don't want to get carried away. We have to wait and see what is happening and find out where Saddam is," INC spokesman Ahmed al-Chalabi told AFP in London.

"I think they (Iraqi leaders) all moved back from Baghdad. They all went back to the Hamrin mountains and that area around Tikrit. In that area they have hidden bunkers, hidden weaponry," he said.

Saddam was born in the village of Ouja, on the outskirts of Tikrit, a provincial capital on the Tigris river 170 kilometers (100 miles) north of the Iraqi capital.

"We cannot say it is the end of the Iraqi regime unless we see the big heads, who are in charge of the regime, captured or killed," said al-Chalabi, reacting to television images of jubilant and looting Iraqis in Baghdad.

SPACE.WIRE