Suspected al Qaeda leader in Iraq caught

Enlarge Photo An undated file photo released by the U.S. military shows Iraq's al Qaeda leader Abu...

Fri, May 9 02:19 PM

By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces have detained a man suspected of being the head of al Qaeda in Iraq after a captured associate led them to him sleeping in a house in the northern city of Mosul, several Iraqi officials said on Friday.

But 12 hours after the Iraqi announcement, the U.S. military said it still had no confirmation that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian, had been seized.

A senior Iraqi security source in Mosul who declined to be identified said the detained man was an Iraqi, not Egyptian, adding he had been caught in a house alone with just one gun and some religious books.

If it is Masri, the arrest would be another blow for Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which has been forced to regroup in northern Iraq after a wave of U.S. military assaults in the past year.

Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said an associate of Masri detained in an earlier operation took Iraqi security forces late on Wednesday to where the al Qaeda leader was hiding.

After being detained, the man confessed to being the al Qaeda in Iraq leader, he said, adding his identity still had to be confirmed. It was unclear where the suspect was being held or if he was in U.S. military custody.

Al Qaeda in Iraq was headed by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until he was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006. His successor, Masri, was Zarqawi's close associate, and has a U.S. bounty of $5 million on his head.

Duraid Kashmula, the governor of Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital, told Reuters in the early hours of Friday that the detained man had confessed to being Masri.

"When police entered the house, they found him asleep. There is no doubt that the person arrested is Masri," Kashmula said.

"The operation was very quick and easy."

U.S. officials blame al Qaeda in Iraq for most big bombings in the country, including an attack on a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that set off a wave of sectarian killings that nearly tipped Iraq into all-out civil war.

A build-up of U.S. troops last year allowed the military to conduct a series of offensives against the group. The emergence of Sunni Arab tribal security units also helped to provide intelligence on al Qaeda activities.

URBAN STRONGHOLD

The result was that al Qaeda has largely been pushed out of Baghdad and its former stronghold in the western province of Anbar to areas in northern Iraq, such as Mosul.

U.S. generals say Mosul is al Qaeda in Iraq's last remaining urban stronghold in the country.

However, U.S. commanders warn that the group, while significantly weakened, can still carry out large-scale attacks.

Iraq's Interior Ministry said a year ago that Masri had been killed, but soon afterwards al Qaeda released an audio tape purportedly from him.

In an hour-long audio tape issued last month also said to be from him, Masri called for renewed attacks on American troops and lashed out at U.S. President George Bush.

He urged militants from the Sunni Islamist group to "celebrate" the announcement that the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq had passed 4,000.

Al Qaeda in Iraq shares a name and ideology if not organisational ties with Osama bin Laden's network, responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The U.S. military says al Qaeda in Iraq is largely foreign led but that its foot soldiers are mainly Iraqis.

(Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Baghdad and Inal Ersan in Dubai)

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