Jordan provided information that helped lead US to Al-Zarqawi

Jordan provided the US military with information that helped to track down and kill al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian official said today.

Some of the information came from Jordan’s sources inside Iraq and led the US military to the area of Baqouba, the region north-east of Baghdad where Iraq’s prime minister Nouri Maliki said al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike last night, the official said.

The official would not elaborate, but Jordan is known to have intelligence agents operating in Iraq to hunt down Islamic militants.

Jordan also analysed a video issued by al-Zarqawi in April and helped pinpoint where it was filmed, the official said.

The video showed images of al-Zarqawi standing in a desert landscape, firing a machine gun.

The official did not give details about how discovering the location led the military to al-Zarqawi or whether the video was filmed in the same location where the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi was killed.

When the video came out, observers said the flat desert setting resembled parts of Iraq’s Anbar province, to the west of Diyala province, where Baqouba is located.