U.S. and British military officials said on Monday they believe Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein's most brutal henchmen, was killed in a coalition air strike.

Al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" after ordering a poison gas attack on a Kurdish village in 1988, was apparently killed on Saturday when U.S. and British aircraft bombed his house in Basra.

Officials are reluctant to say conclusively whether the bodies found in the bombed-out house included al-Majid.

Ali Hassan al-Majid

"Obviously it would not displease us if this were true," said Lt.-Col. Ronnie McCourt, the British Forces spokesman in Doha, Qatar.

"We have some strong indications that he was killed," British Defence Minister Geoff Hoon told reporters in London. "But I can't yet absolutely confirm the fact."

"We believe the reign of terror of Chemical Ali has come to an end," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington.

MILITARY MOVEMENTS COALITION FORCES MILITARY TERMS IRAQI FORCES

The body was found along with those of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence in Basra.

A first cousin of Saddam Hussein, al-Majid was entrusted with the defence of southern Iraq when the country was divided into military districts in the days leading up to the war.

A British armoured column went deep into Basra on Sunday. Light-armoured infantry moved into the city with more than 50 vehicles and about 700 troops.

• FROM APRIL 6, 2003: British troops move deeper into Basra

The British moved in, hoping that having killed the Iraqi leadership, they would encounter little in the way of organized resistance.

During the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war, al-Majid was put in charge of quashing a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq.

He did so with a scorched-earth strategy, killing at least 100,000 people, mostly civilians. He is reported to have boasted about the way he killed about 5,000 Kurds in the village of Halabja in a poison gas attack on March 16, 1988.

Al-Majid served as the governor of Kuwait during the seven-month Iraqi occupation that prompted the 1991 Gulf War. He was Iraq's defence minister in the late 1990s, and a regional Baath Party leader.

A man whose reputation for cruelty stood out amid a regime characterized by brutality, al-Majid has been seen on videos executing Shiite rebels with pistol shots to the head and kicking others in the face as they sat on the ground.

He ordered the 1996 executions of two of his nephews – one of them Saddam's son-in-law – when they were lured back to the country following their defections a year earlier.