U.S. urges caution over al-Masri death reports

Late Tuesday, the leader of a Sunni Arab group in opposed to al-Qaida told Iraqi television that his fighters tracked down and killed al-Masri along with seven of his aides, two of them Saudis.

“Eyewitnesses confirmed his death and their corpses are still at the scene,” said Abdul-Sattar al-Rishawi, head of the Anbar Salvation Council in the vast insurgent stronghold.

Citing information from informants, police Lt. Col. Jabbar Rashid al-Dulaimi, who is a member the Salvation Council, said Wednesday that al-Masri had been killed along with two aides the day before when an explosives belt he was wearing detonated during fighting in the desert northwest of Baghdad. He identified the aides as Mullah Qahtan al-Marawi and Ismail al-Iraqi.

He said Iraqi authorities had not been able to retrieve the body because it was in an area controlled by al-Qaida fighters but insisted they were “100 percent certain” al-Masri had been killed.

Power struggle
The report of al-Masri’s death occurred at a time when al-Qaida is locked in a violent power struggle with other Sunni insurgents angry over its effort to dominate the movement and over the role of foreigners in the terror network.

More than 200 Sunni sheiks in Anbar province have decided to form a political party to oppose al-Qaida.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said al-Masri’s death would be a positive development, but he played down suggestions it would spell the end of the terror threat in Iraq.

“Clearly taking a major terrorist off the battlefield is an important thing and if we can confirm it, if this did happen, without question it would be a significant and positive development,” Crocker told reporters in Washington via a teleconference.

“That said, I would not expect it to in any way bring to an end al-Qaida’s activities in Iraq,” he added. “My sense is that it is now a very decentralized terrorist effort, so while removing its current head would be a good and positive thing, I think we have to expect that we will need to continue dealing with further al-Qaida attacks.”

Clashes have erupted between al-Qaida and other insurgent groups, notably the nationalist 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Islamic Army in Iraq, in at least three provinces, U.S. officers say.

Putting an Iraqi face on the movement
The decision to declare the Islamic State of Iraq under the leadership of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was widely seen as an effort by al-Qaida to put an Iraqi face on the movement. Al-Masri is the “war minister” of the self-declared state.

At the same time, the U.S. military has stepped up covert operations to disrupt the terror network. Last Friday, the Pentagon announced the arrest of veteran jihadist Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, an associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The Pentagon did not say where al-Iraqi was arrested but said he was allegedly trying to return to his native Iraq.

According to associates in Afghanistan, al-Masri has been involved in Islamic extremist movements since 1982, when he joined Islamic Jihad, a terror group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden’s chief deputy.

Al-Masri fought with Muslim rebels against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and later ran al-Qaida training camps there.

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