"I am calling to tell you I am safe and sound," Barzan al-Tikriti said in a message he left on his family's answering machine at their home in Switzerland, said Al Mostaqbal newspaper, quoting an Iraqi source "familiar with the last minutes of the Iraqi regime".

US intelligence operatives used the call to trace him to a farm in the Ramadi region west of Baghdad, it said.

Al Mostaqbal, owned by Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, said the call was the first Barzan made since Saddam placed him under house arrest on March 5 in a villa in the Radwaniya palace compound near Baghdad's main airport.

But after US troops entered Baghdad, Barzan reportedly fled to his farm in Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the capital.

A family friend, quoting relatives in Europe, told AFP on Friday that Barzan was killed that same day at the Ramadi farm in a US air strike.

He was placed under house arrest for contesting Saddam's intention to install his younger son in power should he be killed, the friend said.

US Central Command said earlier Friday that Barzan had been targeted by air strikes in Ramadi with six JDAM "smart bombs".

Barzan was appointed head of Iraq's intelligence in 1983 but fell out with Saddam in 1988 because he objected to the marriage of one of the toppled president's daughters to Hussein Kamel Hassan, said the family friend.

Hussein Kamal is a member of the Takriti clan who became a leading figure of the regime, in charge of military industrialisation, before he defected in 1995 to Jordan. He was killed in 1996 upon his return to Iraq.

Saddam's eldest son Uday had also married Barzan's daughter Saja "a long time ago," but they divorced after a few weeks, said the family friend.

After his dispute with Saddam, Barzan was sent in 1988 to Geneva to represent Iraq at the United Nations and returned home in 1998.

SPACE.WIRE