Troops kill al-Qaida in Iraq chief

US TROOPS have killed the al-Qaida in Iraq mastermind of the bombing that destroyed the golden dome of a famed sacred Shi’ite shrine last year, the military said yesterday.

It said the attack on the dome set in motion an unrelenting cycle of sectarian bloodletting.

Haitham Sabah Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, the group’s Salahuddin province emir, was killed in a US operation east of Samarra on Thursday, the military said. He was also responsible for the June 13 bombing that toppled the Askariya shrine’s twin minarets, it said.

Said Rear Admiral Mark Fox, a US military spokesman: “From the surveillance that was going on, it looked like they were setting up an ambush.

“So they brought in rotary wing and close air support and there was some strafing that occurred from helicopters.

“Al-Badri’s body was positively identified by close associates and family members,” Admiral Fox said.

Another 80 suspected insurgents were detained in US and Iraqi raids in the Samarra area over the past week, the US military said in a statement. More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and police took part in the giant operation, backed by US paratroopers.

The military announced two more soldier deaths: one during combat in western Baghdad on Saturday and another from a roadside bomb near the capital the same day.

That brought to at least 3,665 the number of US military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war started in March 2003.