Leader of al-Qaida-in-Iraq reported captured in raid
Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/225135/
BAGHDAD — Iraqi police commandos captured the leader of al-Qaida-in-Iraq in a raid in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said Thursday.
The U. S. military in Baghdad said it was “checking with Iraqi authorities to confirm the accuracy of this information.”
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said the arrest of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was reported by the Iraqi commander in Mosul, where insurgents have sought to establish a foothold after being widely uprooted from Baghdad and surrounding areas last year.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the arrest occurred “at midnight and during the primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir.”
Khalaf told Iraqi state television that al-Masri was arrested during a police raid, but gave no other details.
Al-Masri took over al-Qaida-in-Iraq after its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed June 7, 2006, in a U. S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.
“The commander of Ninevah military operations informed me that Iraqi troops captured Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the leader of al-Qaida-in-Iraq,” al-Askari told The Associated Press by telephone.
Any direct links are murky between al-Masri’s insurgents and the terror network of Osama bin Laden. But al-Masri has followed a path that brought him in contact with some of bin Laden’s top lieutenants.
U. S. officials said al-Masri, whose name means “The Egyptian” in Arabic, joined al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990 s and trained as a car-bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the U. S.-led invasion in 2003.
The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that includes al-Qaida-in-Iraq, last year announced an “Islamic Cabinet” for Iraq and named al-Masri as “minister of war.” The U. S. military had put up a $ 5 million bounty for al-Masri.
The reported arrest of al-Masri also turned attention back to the Sunni insurgency after weeks of battles with Shiite militias.
In Baghdad, government envoys set strict demands for Shiite militias to end their battles against U. S.-led forces in Baghdad.
Thousands of civilians already have fled their homes in the teeming Sadr City slum — home to nearly 40 percent of Baghdad’s population — and aid groups say some areas are desperately short of food and medicine after seven weeks of street battles.
The latest conflict flared in late March after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on armed Shiite factions in the southern city of Basra, the nation’s second-largest urban area. Mahdi Army fighters quickly rose up in Basra and Sadr City, their stronghold in Baghdad.
Attacks returned to Basra as several rockets hit what the U. S. military described as a “contingency operating base,” killing at least two civilian contractors and wounding four soldiers. The statement did not provide the nationalities.
Helicopters and a drone fired back, killing six extremists.
In a bid to end the fighting, a committee from the parliament’s Shiite bloc met with representatives of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to a senior member of the government group.
Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer of the United Iraqi Alliance, an umbrella group in the parliament that includes al-Maliki’s party, said the committee demands that militants lay down their arms and clear all roadside bombs planted in Sadr City.
A Shiite lawmaker from al-Sadr’s bloc, Gufran al-Saadi, confirmed the meeting took place but insisted U. S. troops must first withdraw from the district before talks can progress. Information for this article was contributed from Baghdad by Qassim Abdul-Zahra of The Associated Press.