BAGHDAD, 20 February 2004 — Coalition forces in Iraq killed an aide of suspected Al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and arrested several other people in a raid last week, a US general told AFP yesterday.
“There was a terrorist stakeout of Zarqawi’s at Al-Ramadi that we were able to raid and kill one of his operatives and arrest others,” Maj. Gen. Charles Swannick said.
Swannick, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, said items including suicide vests, bomb-making equipment and passports were seized in the raid on Feb. 19. He was confirming a report in the Baghdad daily newspaper that a Zarqawi deputy it named as Nidal Arabiyat Agha Hamza was killed in an operation conducted last Thursday north of Baghdad.
The US Army recently doubled to $10 million the bounty on Zarqawi, and released a memo seized last month and attributed to the wanted Jordanian, branding the document a “blueprint for terror in Iraq.”
In the letter, Zarqawi allegedly takes credit for a series of car bombings around the country and speaks of his ambitions to provoke a civil war among Iraq’s ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, the United Nations said credible elections were possible in Iraq within a year if planning started immediately, while the United States warned foreign elements against attempts to destabilize the country.
In the northern Kurdish city of Mosul where infiltrations of foreign militants have been reported, three Iraqis working with the US forces there were killed in a drive by shooting, the police chief said yesterday.
Unidentified gunmen shot up a car of contractors hired by the coalition on Monday night, killing three and seriously wounding two others, Gen. Hikmat Mahmud Mohammad told AFP.
In another development, members of Iraq’s interim Governing Council were studying the recommendations issued by the United Nations Monday on the country’s political process. The report by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s envoy Lakhdar Brahimi dealt a final blow to the agreement hastily signed between the coalition and the interim Iraqi executive and marked the world body’s return to centre stage.
