U.S. Troops Hunt al-Qaida in Raids in Iraq

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive...D8I4P4IG0.html

By KIM GAMEL Associated Press Writer

June 09,2006 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. troops conducted nearly 40 raids Friday in Iraq, taking advantage of information gleaned from searches following Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death, a military spokesman said, also revealing new information about the man believed poised to take the terror leader's place.

Fearing reprisals, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also imposed a driving ban in Baghdad and in Diyala, fearing insurgents will seek to avenge his death.

U.S. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the military spokesman, also said that al-Zarqawi was alive when Iraqi police arrived at the strike scene and that U.S. forces also saw him alive.

"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news conference.

U.S. and Polish forces arrived intending to provide unspecified medical treatment, and al-Zarqawi was put on a stretcher, Caldwell said. The terrorist "attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher, everybody reached to insert him back. ... He died a short time later from the wounds suffered during the air strike.

"We did in fact see him alive," Caldwell said. "There was some sort of movement he had on the stretcher, and he did die a short time later."

Caldwell said the U.S. military was still compiling details of the airstrike, including the exact amount of time Zarqawi was alive afterward. He said an initial analysis of Zarqawi's body had been done but he was not certain whether it constituted a full autopsy.

In an interview earlier Friday with Fox News Channel, Caldwell was more descriptive of Zarqawi's actions before he died.

"He was conscious initially, according to the U.S. forces that physically saw him," Caldwell told Fox. "He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was U.S. military."

At the news conference, the spokesman also provided a revised death toll from the attack.

U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said at the time that the American airstrike targeted "an identified, isolated safe house." Four other people, including a woman and a child, were killed with al-Zarqawi and Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, the terrorist's spiritual consultant.

Caldwell said it now appears there was no child among those killed. He cautioned that some facts were still being sorted out but said that three women and three men, including al-Zarqawi, were killed.

Hours after the bombing, U.S. troops carried out 17 simultaneous raids Wednesday near Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province. The region is in the heartland of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has seen a recent rise in sectarian violence. Baqouba is 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Those raids provided the information leading to the searches overnight Thursday.

In the 39 raids, troops "picked up things like memory sticks, some hard drives" that would allow American forces to begin dismantling al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq, Caldwell told the British Broadcasting Corp.

He said the latest information was helping U.S. forces unravel the source of al-Qaida's weapons and financing.

Earlier, Caldwell had said U.S. forces waited to kill al-Zarqawi before carrying out the other raids, in an apparent effort not to spook the Jordanian-born terrorist.

"We had identified other targets that we obviously did not go after to allow us to focus on al-Zarqawi. Now that we got him, we will go after them," Caldwell told the BBC.

As Iraqi and U.S. leaders cautioned that al-Zarqawi's death was not likely to end the bloodshed in Iraq, Caldwell said another foreign-born militant was already poised to take over the terror network's operations.

He said Egyptian-born Abu al-Masri would likely take the reins of al-Qaida in Iraq. He said al-Masri trained in Afghanistan and arrived in Iraq in 2002 to establish an al-Qaida cell.

The U.S. military did not further identify al-Masri and his real identity could not immediately be determined. But the Central Command has listed an Abu Ayyub al-Masri as among its most wanted al-Zarqawi associates and placed a $50,000 bounty on his head.

Al-Masri, whose name is an obvious alias meaning "father of the Egyptian," is believed to be an expert at constructing roadside bombs, the leading cause of U.S. military casualties in Iraq.

The midday driving ban in Baghdad lasted four hours. All traffic was banned in Diyala from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. for three days starting Friday.

The Baghdad ban fell when most Iraqis go to mosques for Friday prayers. Bombers have previously targeted Shiite mosques with suicide attackers and mortars hidden in vehicles.

Iraqi authorities imposed the vehicle ban as a security measure "to protect mosques and prayers from any possible terrorist attacks, especially car bombs, in the wake off yesterday's event," an official from the prime minister's office said, referring to al-Zarqawi's death. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

Al-Zarqawi, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was killed at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday after an intense two-week hunt that U.S. officials said first led to the terror leader's spiritual adviser and then to him.

The U.S. military earlier had displayed images of the battered face of al-Zarqawi and reported that he was identified by fingerprints, tattoos and scars. But Caldwell said Friday that authorities made a visual identification of al-Zarqawi upon arriving at the site of the airstrike.

Biological samples from his body were delivered to an FBI crime laboratory in Virginia for DNA testing. Results were expected in three days.

Violence was unabated Thursday and Friday:

--Gunmen kidnapped Muthanna al-Badri, director general of state company for oil projects, or SCOP, while he drove Thursday from the ministry to his home in a predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Baghdad, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said Friday.

--A fire fight Friday west of Baqouba killed five civilians and wounded three, and demolished five houses, according to regional authorities. The circumstances were unclear.

--The torso of a man wearing a military uniform was found floating in a river Friday morning near Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, a morgue official said.

--Police found five unidentified bodies late Thursday of men who had been shot in the head in eastern Baghdad.

--Gunmen opened fire on Friday's funeral procession for the brother of the governor of the northern city of Mosul. Zuhair Kashmola was killed by gunmen on Thursday.