Iraqi Official Says Insurgent Leader Was Hurt in Clash

By Ernesto Londono

The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, who is known by the alias Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was injured in a clash with Iraqi police Thursday night, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said.

One of al-Masri’s deputies, Abu Abdullah al-Mujamie, was killed in the gunfight near Samarra, ministry spokesman Abdul Kareem al- Kinany said.

U.S. officials have said al-Masri took over the leadership of the insurgent group following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by U.S. forces in a June airstrike.

A senior al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Abu Amar al-Dulaimi, confirmed the death of al-Mujamie, whom he described as al-Masri’s “personal escort,” but he questioned whether al-Masri was even in the area.

Al-Kinany, the ministry spokesman, said Iraqi forces conducted the operation “without U.S. intervention,” but al-Dulaimi said people in the area reported seeing helicopters and fighter planes roaming the sky afterward, a possible indication of a U.S. role in the clash.

Also Thursday, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his top deputies to leave Iraq in order to ease the implementation of the Baghdad security plan, which U.S. and Iraqi forces began to roll out this week.

Al-Sadr, the leader of the powerful Mahdi Army militia, recently went to Iran, according to U.S. officials.

During a news conference Thursday night, Talabani said al-Sadr told government officials that he is “eager for the stability of the state and the success of the security plan. He gave the government the green light to detain any outlaws.”

In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he believes that al-Sadr’s followers are concerned about the new operation to secure Baghdad and suggested that al-Sadr and his militia will “go to ground” over the coming months.

“And the question is, during that space . . . can we and the Iraqis provide enough security so that economic development, improvements in governance, political reconciliation can all begin to make real progress in Iraq?” Gates said.

Gates said it was “an assumption” that al-Sadr has gone to Iran. “I haven’t seen any factual proof of it at this point, but that’s what . . . I hear people think,” he said.

In recent days some of al-Sadr’s aides in Iraq have denied that he has left the country.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi forces pushed deeper Thursday into Sunni militant strongholds in Baghdad where cars rigged with explosives greeted their advance, killing seven civilians.

Outside Baghdad, troops also faced Sunni ambushes. In Buhriz, about 30 miles northeast of the capital, Sunni gunmen and soldiers from the 1st Squadron, 12th Cavalry Regiment engaged in a 20-minute firefight. No U.S. casualties were reported, and the militant toll was not known.

Separately, however, a U.S. Marine was killed in combat in western Anbar province, a Sunni militant stronghold. The death raised the U.S. toll to 3,133 since the war began in 2003.

Also Thursday, the leader of one of Iraq’s most revered Shiite mosques suspended Friday prayers to protest a Wednesday raid on a Baghdad mosque.

U.S. military officials said in a statement that Iraqi forces raided the Barantha Mosque because they suspected it was “used as a place to conduct sectarian violence against Iraqi civilians as well as a safe haven and weapons-storage area for illegal militia groups.” The officials said they confiscated three heavy-machine guns and 80 assault rifles.

The mosque’s imam, Jalal al-Din Saghir, a Shiite cleric and parliament member who is a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, decried the raid. He said it was conducted solely by U.S. forces.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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