"We have no evidence that they have been killed in that attack," Chalabi said, referring to the US bombing Monday of a building where the three were believed to have met.

Chalabi -- speaking from Nasiriyah in southern Iraq -- said Saddam's younger son, Qusay, is known to have survived the attack.

Nothing has been heard from Saddam since Monday, when a US B-1 bomber flattened a building he was believed to have entered in the Al-Mansur district of Baghdad.

However, in London, newspapers quoted intelligence sources as saying the Iraqi president had likely left just before, maintaining his reputation for secrecy and survival built up over decades.

Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, also questioned US and British claims that Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, notorious as "Chemical Ali" for ordering poison gas attacks on Kurdish villagers in 1988, had been killed.

Chalabi said Majid was smuggled into Baghdad after being wounded in an air raid in southern Iraq.

SPACE.WIRE