Zarqawi’s No. 2 shot dead in Baghdad operation

By Luke Baker

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The second-in-command of al Qaeda in
Iraq, Abu Azzam, was shot dead in Baghdad this week, the U.S.
military said on Tuesday, dealing a potentially powerful blow
to the group at the heart of Iraq’s insurgency.

U.S. and Iraqi forces tracked Azzam, a right-hand man to
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted man in Iraq, to a
high-rise Baghdad apartment building where he was shot early on
Sunday, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan
said.

“We had a tip from an Iraqi citizen that led us to him,”
Boylan said. “We’ve been tracking him for a while.”

The death may mark progress against militants but attacks
continued unabated. A suicide bomber blew himself up among a
crowd of Iraqi police recruits north of Baghdad on Tuesday,
killing at least 10 and wounding around 30, police said.

Azzam is believed to have commanded day-to-day operations
in Baghdad and other cities, while also financing attacks and
the passage of militants into Iraq from neighboring countries.
He was also a religious adviser to Zarqawi, Boylan said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was expected to
give more details at a news conference scheduled for 1100 GMT.

It is not known what nationality Azzam was, or whether he
was alone when killed. The U.S. military said he had claimed
responsibility in the past for killing a member of Iraq’s
former Governing Council, and the governor of the city of
Mosul.

His death follows the capture or killing of several
associates of Zarqawi’s in recent months, including a driver
and several junior commanders, that have led U.S. forces to
believe they may be closing in on Zarqawi himself.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is allied to Osama bin Laden and his
al Qaeda network. His group has claimed many of the deadliest
attacks in Iraq, and recently pledged “all-out war” against
Iraq’s majority Shi’ite population, an effort to provoke civil
war and drive the country further into chaos.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned of more violence in
the run-up to a referendum on a new constitution on October 15,
when voters are expected to say “Yes” to a document drawn up by
the Shi’ite- and Kurdish-led government over Sunni Arab
objections.

Washington has offered a $25 million bounty for Zarqawi,
who is believed to be hiding out in western Iraq.

Boylan said he was not sure how much intelligence was
gathered at the site where Azzam was shot, but said either way
the operation was a blow to the operations of al Qaeda in Iraq.

“This shows that we are actively going after the network.
We’ve taken down the number two in the network and that is
going to have an impact,” he said. “And whoever replaces him as
number two, we will go after him as well.”

Sheikh Abdullah Abu Azzam was also known as the Emir of
Anbar, the province west of Baghdad that has been the heartland
of the Sunni Arab insurgency. A $50,000 reward was on offer for
information leading to his death or capture.

BAQUBA BOMBER

While the U.S. military was upbeat about Azzam’s killing,
the capture or death of suspected militant commanders has not
always led to a decline in attacks in the past.

In Baquba, 65 kms (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a suicide
bomber strapped with explosives mingled among a crowd of
hundreds of police recruits in the center of town and blew
himself up, killing at least 10 and wounding 26.

Police said the death toll was expected to rise.

The bomber approached the police station on foot, dressed
in black and making no attempt to conceal his suicide vest,
Specialist Jeff Young of the U.S. military told Reuters.

Young, speaking from the U.S.-Iraqi Joint Coordination
Center in Diyala province, said the police station normally
recruited trainees twice a month. The recruits usually formed a
long queue on a busy road in the town.

Iraqi police and army recruits are a frequent target of
guerrillas determined to destroy U.S. and Iraqi government
attempts to build up security forces to tackle the insurgency.

There were other attacks around the country. In Baghdad,
gunmen fired on a convoy of Iraqi police vehicles taking
detainees to Abu Ghraib prison, killing two and wounding 12,
among them police and detainees, the Interior Ministry said.

Attacks have been building in the run up to the
constitution referendum, which threatens to divide the country
along sectarian lines, with Sunni Arabs strongly opposed to
many elements in the document, and Shi’ites and Kurds lined up
on the other side of the debate.

Tensions are also expected to be running high come October
15 since the referendum falls just four days before Saddam
Hussein is due to go on trial for crimes against humanity in
connection with the death of around 150 Shi’ite men in a
village north of Baghdad following a failed assassination in
1982.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim, Mussab
al-Khairalla, Sebastian Alison and Mohammed Ramahi in Baghdad
and Faris al-Mehdawi in Baquba)