United States forces are ”zooming in” on al-Qaeda’s Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who may be in Baghdad or a nearby town, a US military spokesperson said on Thursday.
Major General Rick Lynch said that during raids in Yusufiyeh, a town south of the capital, coalition forces had found footage of the Internet video message delivered by al-Zarqawi last month.
”Al-Zarqawi is zooming in on Baghdad and we are zooming in on him,” Lynch told reporters. ”His focus is Yusufiyeh and Baghdad and we believe he is somewhere in person in the vicinity. Coalition forces conducted five raids in the town of Yusufiyeh and found a large number of documents and unedited Internet footage of the video message.”
The shadowy Jordanian-born Sunni extremist appeared in a website video on April 25, the first time he has appeared for at least three years, and vowed to defeat the US in Iraq.
Al-Zarqawi is blamed for numerous large-scale attacks during the insurgency in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, as well as the kidnapping and gruesome beheading of hostages.
Al-Zarqawi, appointed emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq by the network’s supremo Osama bin Laden, has a $25-million US bounty on his head. He was freed by Jordan’s King Abdullah II under a general amnesty in 1999.
Yusufiyeh is on the Euphrates river about 40km south of Baghdad. — AFP
