Iraqi forces claim capture of al-Qaida leader imminent

SECURITY forces are closing in on the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a senior Iraqi official said yesterday, showing a captured video of the terror chief teaching followers how to build a car bomb.

The video, displayed to journalists, showed Abu Ayyub al-Masri — his face exposed — going through what appeared to be a storage bunker, pointing out different elements of a car bomb in what National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie called an instructional CD.

“My message to Iraqis in Ramadan, God willing, is that in a very short time, we will bring you the good news of Abu Ayyub al-Masri either killed or handcuffed to be brought before the Iraqi justice system,” Mr al-Rubaie said.

The US military said yesterday that more than 20 terror suspects believed to be linked to al-Qaida in Iraq had been killed or captured in raids in the past week in Baghdad and the nearby cities of Baqouba, Ramadi and Samarra.

A woman and a girl died in a crossfire during a joint US-Iraqi raid early yesterday on a suspected militia member’s home, Iraqi security officials said.

Angry men at the scene held up a colour image of a smiling, winking Jesus giving a “thumbs up” sign that they said was left by troops at the raided house.

The image, known as the “Buddy Christ,” is from the movie Dogma, a 1999 religious satire.

Neither the US military nor the Iraqi army commented on the allegations surrounding the raid.

“We are poor people sitting in our house,” a woman dressed in black said in the aftermath of the raid. “We don’t harbour rancour against others.”

The raid came a day after an unprecedented curfew in the Iraqi capital prompted by the arrest of an al-Qaida suspect who the US military said was “in the final stages” of carrying out a string of bombings in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, the centre of government.

The suspect, seized on Friday night, was the bodyguard of a top Sunni Arab politician, Adnan al-Dulaimi, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front — the largest Sunni coalition in the 275-member parliament.

Baha el-Deen al-Araji, a Shi’ite lawmaker, accused Sunni politicians of having “direct and indirect links to Saddamists, Takfiris (Sunni radicals) and terrorists”. The US military said Mr al-Dulaimi was not a target of the raid that captured his bodyguard.

Mr al-Rubaie sought to calm any Sunni-Shi’ite tensions after the arrest, asking politicians “not to take advantage of security operations to settle old political scores.”

With the end of the curfew yesterday morning, new violence killed at least 17 people in Baghdad and elsewhere — including the three who died in yesterday’s raid — and eight bodies were found, apparently the latest victims of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’ite death squads.

Among the dead were three Iraqi civilians killed by a car bomb targeting a US military patrol.

Mr al-Rubaie did not say why he believed security forces were close to catching al-Masri, who was named as leader of Iraq’s most feared terror group after the death of his predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a June airstrike.

The US military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.