Military deaths in Iraq hit 2,500

By Omar al-Ibadi

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The number of U.S. military deaths in
Iraq has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday, more
than three years into a conflict that finds U.S.-led forces
locked in a struggle with a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency.

The news came after a senior Iraqi official in Baghdad said
his country’s security forces had seized al Qaeda in Iraq
documents giving key information about the militant group’s
network and the whereabouts of its leaders.

“We believe this is the beginning of the end of al Qaeda in
Iraq,” national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told a
televised news conference in the Iraqi capital.

In Washington, the Pentagon also said 18,490 U.S. troops
had been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a
U.S.-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

Rubaie told Reuters earlier this year the insurgency
against the U.S.-backed, Shi’ite-led government had been
defeated. But violence has continued to rage across Iraq,
killing hundreds of people and showing no signs of abating.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have also in the past said al
Qaeda, blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks in Iraq in the
last three years, was on the defensive.

They have hailed last week’s death of al Qaeda leader in
Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid as a major blow to
the insurgency, while cautioning it would not end violence.

About 50,000 Iraqi troops, supported by more than 7,000
U.S.-led forces, launched a security crackdown in Baghdad this
week aimed at putting further pressure on militants.

“The government is on the attack now … to destroy al
Qaeda and to finish this terrorist organization in Iraq,”
Rubaie said.

AL QAEDA HIDEOUT

He added that some documents were found in an al Qaeda
hideout where Zarqawi had been, but did not make clear whether
this was the place where the Jordanian militant was killed.

Holding what he said was one of them in his hand, he added:

“I present to you a document that was found in one of
Zarqawi’s computers that reveals many dangerous things and
gives details on strategy and plans of the al Qaeda terrorist
organization in Iraq.”

But a copy of the unsigned document, whose authenticity
could not be independently verified, did not identify the
anonymous author as an al Qaeda member or give specific
information about any planned attacks.

Instead, it suggested that insurgent forces were being
weakened by U.S. raids and propaganda and proposed ways to
counter this, for example by infiltrating Iraq’s armed forces,
recruiting new members and manufacturing more weapons.

It also said the best way to get out of “the crisis” was to
foster conflict between the United States and another country,
like Shi’ite Iran, and by stirring U.S.-Shi’ite tension in
Iraq.

Rubaie said the confiscated material showed that al Qaeda’s
central strategy was to “divide, destroy and rule.”

He added: “These documents have given us the edge over al
Qaeda and (they) also gave us the whereabouts of their network,
of their leaders, of their weapons and the way they lead the
organization and the whereabouts of their meetings.”

Al Qaeda has vowed to fight on and its new leader in Iraq,
little known Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, vowed in a Web statement
earlier this week to avenge Zarqawi’s death.

The U.S. military said on Thursday it believed the real
name of the group’s new leader was Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
Al-Masri, an Egyptian, trained in Afghanistan and formed al
Qaeda’s first cell in Baghdad.

(Additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington)