BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Thursday that al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed in a joint U.S. and Iraqi military raid north of Baghdad.
Jordanian-born Zarqawi is blamed by the United States for the beheading of foreign captives and suicide bombings that have maimed and killed hundreds in Iraq. He had become a figurehead for Islamist militants opposing Washington and Maliki’s government.
“Today Zarqawi has been terminated,” Maliki told a televised news conference attended by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, and other senior officials.
Casey said Zarqawi’s body had been identified and warned that Zarqawi’s followers still posed a security threat to Iraq.
Iraqiya television said seven Zarqawi aides were also killed in the raid in the violent city of Baquba 65 km (40 miles) north of the capital.
The most feared leader of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq, with a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, Zarqawi has inspired an apparently endless supply of militants from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in suicide missions in Iraq.
Iraqi and U.S. officials say he has formed a loose alliance with Saddam Hussein’s former agents, benefiting from their money, weapons and intelligence assets to press his campaign.
Some posters of the most wanted man in Iraq show him in glasses, looking like an accountant, others as a tough-looking man in a black skullcap.
Believed to be in his late 30s, Zarqawi remains a mysterious figure for Iraqis, who only know the carnage of his bombers.
His killing could be seen as one of the most significan’t developments for the United States forces and the Iraqi government it backs since the capture of former President Saddam Hussein.
MINISTERIAL CANDIDATES
Maliki had earlier won the approval of his Shi’ite Alliance for nominees for the interior and defense posts and will present them to parliament on Thursday, Shi’ite sources said.
“Last night the Alliance gave Maliki authorization to present the candidates for interior and defense minister to parliament today,” Alliance member Bahaa al-Araji told Reuters.
Maliki apparently broke the deadlock by offering to present two Shi’ite nominees for interior minister — Jawaad al-Bolani and Farouk al-Araji — in a bid to satisfy several leaders in his fractious Alliance.
Maliki’s Sunni Arab nominee for defense minister — Iraqi ground forces commander General Abdel Qader Jassim — remains the same, said the sources.
Parliamentary approval for any candidates Maliki offers could help pull him out of a political crisis that has hurt efforts to impose a security crackdown against a Sunni Arab insurgency and sectarian violence raising fears of civil war.
Sunnis and Kurds have told Maliki they would back his candidate Araji for interior minister but three rival parties in his Alliance want Bolani, a former army colonel under Saddam Hussein.
The interior ministry came under intense scrutiny under the previous minister, accused by Sunni leaders of sanctioning death squads, a charge he denied.
The political stalemate that has prevented Maliki from filling the top security posts since he took power on May 20 has been set against some of the most gruesome violence Iraq has seen since a 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam.
Police found a total of 17 severed heads in Diyala province north of Baghdad over the last few days and gunmen dragged 24 people, mostly students, out of their cars in the same area and shot them dead on Sunday.
