Abu Ayyub al-Masri
צילום: איי אף פי
Report: Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq killed
Iraq interior ministry receives ‘definite intelligence reports’ of al Masri’s death in Baghdad. US military cannot confirm reports
The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed on Tuesday in an internal fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.
“We have definite intelligence reports that al Masri was killed today,” Brigadier-General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told Reuters.
Another source in the ministry also said Masri had been killed. Khalaf said the battle happened near a bridge in the small town of al-Nibayi, north of Baghdad.
Both Khalaf and the other source in the ministry said the authorities did not have Masri’s body.
The US military said it could not confirm the reports.
"I hope that it is true, but we want to be very careful to make sure,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver, a spokesman for the US military in Iraq.
There has been increasing friction between Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups, particularly over al-Qaeda’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in Iraq.
Formed al-Qaeda’s first cell in Baghdad
Masri, who is also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, assumed the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006.
US and Iraqi officials accuse al-Qaeda of trying to tip Iraq into full-scale civil war between Iraq’s majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs with a campaign of spectacular car bomb attacks that have killed thousands.
Iraqi officials also blame al-Qaeda for destroying a holy Shiite shrine in Samarra a year ago, an act that unleashed a surge in sectarian bloodletting.
The US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said last week that al-Qaeda was now “probably public enemy number one” in Iraq.
Masri, an Egyptian, has been described by the US military as a former close Zarqawi associate who trained in Afghanistan and formed al-Qaeda’s first cell in Baghdad.
The United States has a $5 million bounty on Masri’s head.
