The international police organisation Interpol today said it had issued an international wanted persons notice for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, who is wanted in several countries for terror attacks.

Iraqi security forces questioned terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Fallujah area last year but released him because they didn’t realise who he was, the deputy interior minister said today.

IRAQ’S interior minister said his office believes militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was wounded, while an internet statement claimed that Iraq’s most feared terrorist group had appointed a deputy to fill in for the Jordanian.

An internet audiotape posted today, purportedly by the leader of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounced Iraq’s Shiites as collaborators with the Americans and called the country’s rulers “apostates".

US-led forces have recovered a letter they believe was addressed to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi complaining about low morale among his followers and the incompetence of leaders in his terror network, the military said today.

Jordan’s military court today sentenced wanted terror leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi to 15 years jail and a detained associate to three years behind bars for the 2003 Jordanian Embassy attack in Baghdad that killed 18 people.

INSURGENTS killed five US soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad yesterday and bombed more polling stations across the country, sending a message that if Iraqis suffer on election day, "you have only yourselves to blame."

Jordan’s military court today convicted a terror suspect of raising funds to help Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted militant in Iraq, carry out attacks on US forces there and against Jordanian interests in the kingdom.

A video of a Polish woman, kidnapped in Baghdad last night, was shown on Al-Jazeera television today.

Jordan’s military prosecutor indicted 13 alleged Muslim militants today, including fugitive Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, for an al-Qaida-linked plot to attack targets in the country with chemical and conventional weapons.

American warplanes pounded the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah today after the city’s leaders suspended peace talks and rejected the Iraqi government’s demands to turn over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

A car bomb exploded today outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said.

A SUICIDE bomber rammed his four-wheel drive vehicle packed with artillery shells into a crowd of Iraqi army volunteers in Baghdad yesterday, and the massive explosion that followed killed at least 35 people and wounded 138.

The leader of militants who say they beheaded an American in Iraq has allegedly written to Osama bin Laden saying his fighters are being squeezed by US-led coalition troops.

THE head of the Iraqi Governing Council was assassinated in a suicide car bombing near a checkpoint outside the coalition headquarters in central Baghdad yesterday.

American troops killed a key lieutenant of suspected al-Qaida linked militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi during a shoot-out west of Baghdad, the US military said today.

Al Qaida wants to provoke a religious war in Iraq to further destabilise the conflict-ridden country, according to a captured document reported today.