BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi officials said yesterday that Syria captured and handed over Saddam Hussein’s half brother, a most wanted leader in the Sunni-based insurgency, ending months of Syrian denials that it was harboring fugitives from the ousted Saddam regime. Iraq authorities said Damascus acted in a gesture of goodwill.

Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who shared a mother with Saddam, was nabbed along with 29 other fugitive members of the former dictator’s Baath Party in Hasakah in northeastern Syria, 30 miles from the Iraqi border, the officials said on condition of anonymity. The American military in Iraq had no immediate comment.

Syria is under intense pressure from America, the United Nations, France, and Israel to drop its support for radical groups in the Middle East, to stop harboring Iraqi fugitives, and to remove its troops from Lebanon.

The capture of Mr. al-Hassan, who was believed to be operating from northern Syria to help organize and finance insurgents in Iraq, was the latest in a series of arrests of important insurgent figures that the Iraqi government hopes will deal a crushing blow to violent opposition forces.

A week ago authorities grabbed a key associate and the driver of Jordanian-born terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq and believed to be the inspiration of the ongoing bombings, beheadings, and attacks on Iraqi and American forces. Iraqi officials said they expect to take Mr. al-Zarqawi soon.

Iraqis welcomed news of Mr. al-Hassan’s capture.

“I hope all the terrorists will be arrested soon and we can live in peace,” said a 54-year-old Baghdad housewife, Safiya Nasser Sood. “Those criminals deserve death for the crimes they committed against the Iraqi people.”

“I consider this day as a victory for Iraqis,” said a resident in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, Adnan al-Mousawi. “By God’s will Saddam will stand in court with his officials and this will be the end of the unjust dictatorship.”

The Iraqi officials did not specify when Mr. al-Hassan was captured, only saying he was detained after the February 14 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut, Lebanon, in a blast that killed 16 others. Syria fell under suspicion in the killing because of its military and political domination of the country, where it maintains 15,000 troops. Mr. Hariri had quit the premiership over Syria’s continued presence in Lebanon.

America, France, and the United Nations have applied extreme pressure on Damascus to withdraw from Lebanon, and the Syrians recently said they were pulling their forces back to the border, but not leaving the country immediately. An American deputy assistant secretary of state, David Satterfield, was to meet Syrian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud today to reiterate American demands for the withdrawal and a thorough inquiry into the Hariri assassination.

Syria was under additional pressure after Israel on Saturday accused Damascus of harboring Palestinian Arab terrorists responsible for a Friday night suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in which four Israelis were killed, shattering a hard-won truce.

State Department spokesman Steve Pike said there was no change in the status of American ambassador to Syria, Margaret Scobey, who was pulled from her post in Damascus to protest Hariri’s killing.

The French ambassador to Washington, Jean-David Levitte, told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” that Mr. al-Hassan’s handover “would be certainly a positive development, and that’s exactly what we expect from Syria.”

Two American soldiers killed in a roadside ambush southwest of the capital in Iraq yesterday. The American command also said a Marine was killed Saturday during military operations in central Babil province.

Bomb attacks and ambushes killed nine people near the northern city of Mosul, while five headless bodies – including that of an Iraqi woman – were discovered in and just south of Baghdad. Gunmen, meanwhile, killed two policemen in an ambush as the officers were driving to work in western Baghdad.

In Fallujah, American Marines said one child was killed and six people were injured Saturday when a rocket landed in side a park in the Jolan district. They said 54 people were detained during a two-day sweep for insurgents.