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.