US capture of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was ensued by a fresh wave of bombings and gunfires Monday at the American-backed Iraqi police force.

A pair of suicide bombings rocked two police stations respectively north of Baghdad and in western part of the city in early hours of Monday,killing at least eight people and injuring two dozen others.

Eight Iraqis died and at least 13others were wounded when a suicide bomber drove a car penetrating the blockade and detonated right in front of a police station in al-Hussainiya,30km north ofBaghdad,according to Iraqi police.

A US military spokeswoman in Baghdad said she could confirm two police officers were killed and another policeman and 20civilians were wounded in the bomb attack,which took place 8:30a.m.(0530GMT)Monday.

Half an hour later,a suspect suicide bomber exploded his vehicle outside a criminal investigation office in Amiriyah district in western Baghdad,injuring at least seven policemen and four passers-by.

The police building was partly damaged,and the impact of the blast smashed all the windows of a two-story house 20meters away from the station.

US forces and Iraqi police soon cordoned off the area and conducted an extended search which resulted in finding another car bomb unexploded nearby.

The vehicle contained 500pound explosives when it was found,USCaptain Loudon told reporters at the scene.

Saddam supporters armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades also struck two police stations in Baghdad and a government building in the restive city of Fallujah.

In Fallujah,50km west of the capital,a group of armed men assaulted a government compound,ransacked the offices and set the building on fire.

US soldiers then arrived and secured the area.There was no wordfrom the US-led coalition on the casualties in the fighting.

Rumors were rife in the hotspot town that the man US officials caught near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit,170km north of Baghdad,on Saturday was not the then president.

Demonstrations were witnessed in Tikrit,but were later dispersed by US forces for being unauthorized.

At the site of capture in al-Daur,15km south of Tikrit,US military officers told reporters that Saddam was arrested without resistance and he even put the hands up and offered a negotiation.

Though believed in US custody,Saddam's whereabouts was still unknown.US commander of ground forces in Iraq Lt.Gen.Ricardo Sanchez said the location was kept secret and the top rank captive was under interrogation for information "necessary for us to continue the mission we've been assigned here."

Reports that Saddam had been transferred to a US facility in Qatar were denied late Monday by Muwafaq al-Rubaiye,a member of the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).

The Shiite IGC member insisted that the former Iraqi leader was still in Iraq and should be given a justified trial at a tribunal in Baghdad.

Also on Monday,Iraq's Baath Party announced on an Arabic website that its "secretary general"Saddam Hussein was arrested byUS forces and vowed to continue with resistance attacks.