Tests will determine if terror boss is dead

Mystery continued to surround a firefight that broke out when US and Iraqi forces surrounded a house in the northern Iraq city of Mosul that was believed used by members of al-Qaida in Iraq. Eight insurgents and four Iraqi policemen died in the assault, officials said.

Iraq’s foreign minister said tests were being done to determine if the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, died in the raid.

And a US government official confirmed that DNA from the insurgents’ bodies had been taken for testing.

However, the US ambassador to Iraq cast doubt on whether al-Zarqawi was killed. “Unfortunately, we did not get him in Mosul,” Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said of Iraq’s most feared terrorist.

The raid took place in a mostly Kurdish area of eastern Mosul where attacks against US and Iraqi forces less common than in the western, mostly Sunni Arab part of the city. However, US soldiers say many insurgents live in eastern Mosul and launch attacks elsewhere.

Shahwan Fadhl Ali, a neighbour, said eight Arabs – four men, a woman and three children – had been living quietly there since last year. “They might have been Syrians or Jordanians but not Iraqis,” he said.

On Saturday, police Brig Gen Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al Qaida operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house.

In Moscow, visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hohshyar Zebari told Jordan’s official Petra news agency that authorities were testing DNA samples from several corpses to determine if al-Zarqawi was among them.

But US officials avoided linking al-Zarqawi to the Mosul raid and sought to dispel speculation that the terror mastermind was dead.

“I don’t believe that we got him. Of course, his days are numbered, we are after him, we are getting ever closer,” Khalilzad said.

At the Pentagon, Army spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable said US forces “employ whatever means required” – presumably including DNA – “to identify suspected or known terrorists or insurgents.”

Yesterday US soldiers fired on a civilian vehicle in Iraq because they feared it might hold a suicide bomber, killing at least two adults and a child north-east of the capital, Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials said.

The troops fired on the car yesterday because it was moving erratically outside a US base in Baqouba, 35 miles from Baghdad, said Maj Steven Warren, a US spokesman. “It was one of these regrettable, tragic incidents,” Warren said.

Dr Ahmed Fouad at the city morgue and police officials gave a higher death toll, saying five people – including three children – were killed while driving home from a funeral.

Iraqi officials have long complained about American troops firing at civilian vehicles that appear suspicious. US officials note that suicide car bombers often strike US and Iraqi checkpoints.

The shooting took place in a province that has experienced at least four major bombings in the last three weeks – including a suicide car bomb Monday that missed US vehicles but killed five civilians outside Baqouba.

In Cairo, Egypt, yesterday, leaders of Iraq’s Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis wrapped up a conference by condemning terrorism but saying the opposition had a “legitimate right” to resistance.

Their statement omitted any reference to attacks on US or Iraqi forces, and delegates in Cairo said the omission was intentional.

The gathering organised by the Arab League also said there should be a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, a key demand of Sunni Arabs.

The differentiation between terrorism and legitimate resistance was an overture to some Sunni Arab insurgent groups, which the Iraqi government believes might be ready for talks. The plan would be to drive a wedge between those groups and extremists such as al-Qaida.

“Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships,” the document said.

Also yesterday, leading Shiite lawmaker suggested that he will pursue a federal region in southern Iraq after next month’s elections, pushing forward demands for Shiite autonomy that Sunni leaders fear could tear the country apart.

“We have major missions ahead,” Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the largest bloc in the interim parliament, told a gathering of tribal leaders. “The central and southern regions should be achieved after the elections” set for Dec. 15.

According to Iraq’s new constitution, the country’s 18 provinces – except for Baghdad – can combine to create self-ruled areas. Kurds have such a region in the north and Sunni Arabs fear that a similar Shiite-run mini-state in the south would deprive them of a share of the nation’s oil wealth – concentrated in those two areas.

In other violence yesterday, gunmen killed a Sunni cleric, Khalil Ibrahim, outside his home in the mostly Shiite city of Basra, police said.

The victim was a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of influential Sunni clerics that has been sharply critical of the Shiite-led government.

Four Iraqi policemen were killed and another wounded by gunmen in the town of Tarmiyah just north of Baghdad, police said.