Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader whose three-year reign of terror cost hundreds of lives and wreaked havoc upon attempts to bring stability to Iraq, was tracked down and killed 72 hours after one of his closest associates was captured, it emerged yesterday.
Al-Zarqawi died in an air strike on a remote house in a village north of Baghdad on Wednesday evening, after the arrest and interrogation of Kassim al-Ani, one of the organisation’s commanders in the capital, three days earlier.
The hunt for the Jordanian-born insurgency leader began more than three years ago, almost immediately after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, but was marked by a series of near misses. At one point late last year al-Zarqawi’s laptop was found, but he slipped though the net, and there were also reports that he had been captured, and freed again, by US troops who failed to recognise him.
The breakthrough is thought to have come with the arrest of Ani, and led al-Zarqawi’s pursuers to Diyala province, north of the capital, which has been the scene of an increasingly brutal series of sectarian bomb attacks, beheadings and roadside shootings in recent weeks.
The capture of Ani is also thought to have led to the wave of raids on at least 17 properties across central Iraq on Thursday, which resulted in the detention of further al-Qaeda suspects and the recovery of what a US military spokesperson described as ”a treasure trove” of documentation and other material.
The demise of al-Zarqawi,who was in his late 30s, while hailed as a blow to al-Qaeda, brought a relatively muted response in Washington, London and Baghdad, with few predicting it would lead to an immediate reduction in the violence in Iraq. Asked whether his death would have any great impact on the high death toll in the country, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: ”This isn’t going to change with the death of Zarqawi — we should not have any illusions about this.”
On Thursday US President George Bush announced plans to hold an extraordinary meeting in Camp David on Monday to rethink Iraq policy, as the US sought to sustain military and political momentum from al-Zarqawi’s death. The meeting will include senior members of Bush’s Cabinet, linked by video conference to US military commanders in Baghdad and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki.
The White House denied that the meeting was aimed at drafting a timetable for troop withdrawal. However, administration officials hope the combined impact of al-Zarqawi’s killing, the intelligence gained from raids on suspected al-Qaeda targets and the appointment of three new Iraqi government ministers, has the potential to tip the war in America’s favour.
The news of al-Zarqawi’s death came shortly before the Iraqi Parliament approved Maliki’s nominees for the posts of defence and interior ministers. Abdul Qadir Obeidi, a Sunni, becomes Defence Minister while Jawad Bulani, a Shia, is the Interior Minister. A new Minister of National Security, Shirwan Waili, was also appointed after almost three weeks of wrangling in the governing Shia alliance.
Al-Zarqawi died alongside Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, his ”spiritual adviser”, two other unidentified men, and a woman and a child, when two US Air Force F16s dropped 226kg bombs on a farmhouse near Baqubah, north of Baghdad. – Guardian Unlimited Â