Another half brother of Saddam captured

American forces seized a half brother of Saddam Hussein in a commando raid Thursday, eager to interrogate him about secrets of the old Iraqi regime.

With the fighting all but over, Americans struggled through another day of trying to restore security and vital services for civilians. Soldiers thwarted a Baghdad bank robbery over the protests of Iraqis eager to share in the loot, and Marines sought to calm tensions in Mosul after shooting 17 Iraqis to death in clashes over the past two days.

"The war is not over," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned an audience at the Pentagon. But the State Department awarded Bechtel Restoration of San Francisco a contract worth $34 million immediately and as much as $680 million over 18 months to evaluate and repair Iraq's power, electrical, water and sewage systems.

And the USS Constellation steamed from the Persian Gulf for its home port of San Diego, carrying dozens of warplanes that helped bomb Iraqi forces into submission. It was the second aircraft carrier ordered home in recent days.

Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks announced the capture of Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, a half brother of the former Iraqi leader who is the five of clubs in the Pentagon's deck of most-wanted Iraqis. Hasan was an adviser to Saddam "with extensive knowledge of the regime's inner workings," Brooks said. He also was responsible for managing Saddam's wealth, according to the Coalition for International Justice, a nonprofit organization based in The Hague, Netherlands, and Washington.

Last week, U.S. warplanes bombed a building west of Baghdad where Hasan was believed to be living.

Another of Saddam's three half brothers, Watban Ibrahim Hasan, was captured earlier by U.S. forces. The third has not been found.

The search for weapons of mass destruction continued in Iraq, but Rumsfeld said he doubted any would be found until Iraqis lead American forces to them. The Bush administration cited the desire to eliminate such weapons as one key reason for going to war.

"I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it," he said. "It is not like a treasure hunt where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you find something."

FBI director Robert Mueller disclosed that agents are in Baghdad to help recover items from the antiquities museum and other cultural facilities looted in recent days.

They will aid international efforts to recover stolen items "on both the open and black markets," he said. "We are firmly committed to doing whatever we can to secure these treasures to the people of Iraq," he added.

In addition, Mueller said 25 FBI agents were among the U.S. officials who are carefully examining Iraqi documents, found by U.S. forces, for links to terrorists, potential terror plots, evidence of weapons of mass destruction and activities of Iraqi intelligence agents.

International experts, appalled at the looting of Iraqi historical artifacts, met in Paris under U.N. auspices and called for a temporary embargo on trade in Iraqi cultural objects.

Some participants said it appeared the looting was organized, and that some of those involved had keys to museum vaults and were able to remove items from safes.

One official suggested the effort was organized from outside Iraq.

"In fact I'm pretty sure it was," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. He added that if a good police team were put together, "I think it could be cracked in no time."

Irreplaceable art

The Baghdad museum housed irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections that chronicled ancient life in the cradle of civilization, the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

American forces have been criticized for failing to stop looting in several cities, and there have been complaints that humanitarian relief has been slow in arriving.

U.S. troops found about 1,500 unmarked graves in the northern city of Kirkuk, but it was not immediately clear whose corpses they held. U.S. military officials surveyed the site Thursday, which is near a military base and industrial park on the city's southern edge.

The graves are laid out in neat rows stretching several hundred yards across a parched landscape, and are marked only by weeds and little mounds of dirt.

More than a week after Saddam's regime collapsed, Marine Staff Sgt. Jose Guillen said power has been restored -- by use of diesel plants -- to about 500 homes in Baghdad, a city of roughly 5 million. He said U.S. forces expect to get one of the city's power grids on line by today.

At the same time, Marines foiled one brazen act of lawlessness during the day when they interrupted a robbery at a branch of the al-Rashid Bank and took away $4 million in U.S. currency for safekeeping.

Thieves had blown a hole in the vault and dropped children in to bring out fistfuls of cash. As word spread that the robbery was under way, Iraqis gathered, saying they had accounts at the branch, and a riot broke out. Marines broke it up -- over the protests of Iraqis not involved in the robbery -- and the thieves were arrested.