Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the decision was difficult, but "I feel it was the right decision and I'm glad I did it.

"The brutal careers of Uday and Qusay Hussein came to an end, sending a very clear signal to the Iraqis that the Hussein family is finished and will not be returning to terrorize them again," he told a press conference.

"Coalition forces will continue to root out, capture and kill the remnants of the former regime until they no longer pose a threat to the Iraqi people."

Saddam himself has been in hiding since the fall of his regime to the US-British invaders on April 9, and speculation is rife on whether he is alive.

Audio tapes of his voice, recorded on July 20 and aired recently by Arab language broadcasters, are "probably authentic," according to CIA analysts.

The grisly photos of Uday and Qusay's corpses were released in Baghdad earlier Thursday. The two were killed by US troops Tuesday in a vicious firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The five photos were handed out on compact discs to photographers by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority occupying Iraq and quickly found their way to television stations and newspapers around the world.

"I honestly believe that these two are pretty bad characters and that is important for the Iraqis to know they are gone, to know they're dead, that they're not coming back," said Rumsfeld.

"But the more important point we're making is that the Baathists are finished. Saddam and his henchmen are finished. The strategic importance of the killings ... is to help us persuade the Iraqi people that we have liberated the country."

Paul Bremer, the US interim administrator in Baghdad, in the same press conference, said the release of the photos would likely provoke a backlash of attacks on US forces in Iraq.

"I would not be surprised to see an uptick in violence against our forces," he said.

"But I think in the long run it will also hopefully encourage more Iraqis to come and give us information about more Baathists and that's really what we have to have happen next.

"The strategic importance of the killings," said Bremer, "is to help us persuade the Iraqi people that we are there, having liberated the country, we're there and we're going to be sure that these Baathists have no future."

"There is no tradition as such not to release pictures of dead bodies," said Army Colonel James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman. "There is no prohibition under international law."

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