Airstrike kills terror leader al-Zarqawi in Iraq
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, was killed in a coalition airstrike near Baquba, jubilant U.S. and Iraqi authorities announced Thursday.
Al-Zarqawi's killing is a major coup for the embattled coalition forces.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Gen. George Casey, the highest-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad announced the development at a news conference.
"Today, Zarqawi has been killed," al-Maliki said. The announcement was greeted by cheers and applause.
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Khalilzad -- who called al-Zarqawi "the godfather of sectarian killing and terror in Iraq" -- said the death "marks a great success for Iraq and the global war on terror" and calls it a "good omen" for the new Iraqi government.
"His organization has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in Iraq and abroad."
Casey provided details about the incident
He said al-Zarqawi and a key lieutenant, spiritual advisor Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, were at an isolated safe house at 6:15 p.m. on Wednesday.
"Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates who were conducting a meeting approximately eight kilometers north of Baquba when the airstrike was launched.
Baquba is a volatile area northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, a mixed Shiite-Sunni jurisdiction. There have been many roadside bombings and shootings throughout the province and within the week, severed heads were found in fruit boxes there.
"Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike, and elements of Multi-National Division North, arrived shortly thereafter. We have been able to identify al-Zarqawi by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars."
Al-Maliki indicated that the strike on al-Zarqawi was the "result of cooperation" with the citizenry, saying that authorities many times have asked the citizenry to provide information.
"This is a message to all those who take violence as a path."
Khalilzad said the demise of al-Zarqawi won't end the violence in Iraq, but it is "an important step in the right direction." He said "there will be difficult days ahead" but said that "today is a good day."
CNN's Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.
Dying Zarqawi 'tried to escape'
By Ibon Villelabeitia and Fredrik Dahl in Baghdad
ABU Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive and tried to escape from a stretcher when American troops reached his hideout where war planes had dropped two 500-pound bombs that killed him, the US military said overnight.
The mortally wounded Sunni Arab militant mumbled before he died from injuries he suffered during the air strike in a village north of Baghdad on Wednesday, said Major General William Caldwell, the US military spokesman in Iraq.
US President George W. Bush, seeking to quell speculation that the killing of al Qaeda in Iraq's leader would open the way for US troop reductions, said it will not end the war or the violence but will "help a lot."
"Removing Zarqawi is a major blow to al Qaeda. It's not going to end the war, it's certainly not going to end the violence, but it's going to help a lot," Bush told a news conference with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Mr Bush, facing low popularity over the war in Iraq, also said he would like troops out as soon as possible.
Major General Caldwell, addressing Pentagon reporters by teleconference, said: "Zarqawi, in fact, did survive the air strike."
Iraqi police first reached the site and put him on a stretcher before US ground forces arrived.
"They immediately went to the person in the stretcher (and) were able to start identifying by some distinguishing marks on his body. They had some kind of visual, facial recognition," he told the briefing.
"Zarqawi attempted to, sort of, turn away off the stretcher. Everybody re-secured him back onto the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he'd received from this air strike," Maj-Gen Caldwell said.
He "mumbled a little something but it was indistinguishable and very short."
Maj-Gen Caldwell said that Zarqawi "attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realising it was US military."
Buoyed by the death of a man blamed for a campaign of car bombs and beheadings, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said it was "a new beginning" for Iraq.
But Zarqawi's followers have vowed to fight on and al Qaeda watchers said his successor may be a local figure, with close ties to Osama bin Laden, who focuses attacks more on US and Iraqi troops and less on brutal beheadings and suicide bombings.
Abdel Bari Atwan, an al Qaeda expert who has interviewed Osama bin Laden, said he expects a less extreme Iraqi figure named Abdel Rahman al-Iraqi to take over from Zarqawi.
"Zarqawi was a loose cannon who gave al Qaeda in Iraq a bad name with gruesome beheadings. Bin Laden had put al-Iraqi in place because he thought it would be wiser to have an Iraqi to help forge ties with other groups," said Atwan from London.
Following one of the quietest days in weeks in Baghdad, the government lifted a daytime vehicle curfew it had imposed amid fears of al Qaeda reprisals. It extended the ban in the town of Baquba, near where US planes killed Zarqawi.
Suicide car bombers launched by Zarqawi have attacked Shi'ite mosques in the past as part of a campaign to plunge Iraq into sectarian civil war.
US officials, struggling to defeat an insurgency that has sown mayhem three years since the invasion, have warned against expectations of a quick end to violence. A string of bombs in Baghdad killed at least 31 people on Thursday.
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said the death of Zarqawi would help improve oil production, crippled by violence.
But gunmen kidnapped a senior official of the oil ministry on Thursday. Police and ministry sources said Muthana al-Badri, director general of Iraq's State Company for Oil Projects, had been on his way home when gunmen stopped his car.
DNA samples from the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, who was identified with the help of fingerprints and tattoos, are at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, and tests are expected to be completed by Monday, CNN television said. Zarqawi's spiritual leader, another man and three women also died in the raid.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, writing in Britain's Times newspaper, said his three-week-old national unity government would build on the momentum to rein in violence.
Mr Maliki said Iraq "will soon reach a tipping point in our battle against the terrorists" as Iraqi troops take over responsibility from the 130,000 Americans deployed in Iraq.
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