BAGHDAD: The Iraqi military announced the capture yesterday of the man said to be the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, as at least 78 people were killed in bombings on the deadliest day in Iraq in 14 months.
“Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi was arrested today in Baghdad,” the capital’s security spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta told AFP. “It was Iraqi forces who arrested him based on an intelligence tip-off from someone.” Atta added that Baghdadi, who has been reported captured or killed several times in the past, will be shown on television after being questioned, without specifying when.
Baghdadi is said to be the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, a self-styled umbrella organization for insurgent groups fighting US and Iraqi forces that has pledged loyalty to Osama Bin Laden.
State-owned Iraqi TV channel said Baghdadi’s real name was Hamed Al-Rawi and that he was a former officer in the Iraqi Army. He was born in 1947.
US Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said that while the Pentagon had not yet confirmed whether Baghdadi had been captured, his arrest would be significant. “We think this is a significant Al-Qaeda leader and if the report is true that would be very good news,” he said. “Baghdadi has been believed to be a key leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq for some time.”
The US military in the past had accused Baghdadi of being a ruse designed to put an Iraqi face on a group that has always been led by foreign fighters. In July 2007 a US military spokesman said Baghdadi was a fictional character and that the voice on audiotapes released in his name was that of an actor.
The US military has always said that the real leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir — better known as Abu Ayyub Al-Masri — a veteran Egyptian militant named Al-Qaeda chief in June 2006 following the death of his Jordanian predecessor Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in a US air raid.
The Iraqi military’s announcement came amid a surge in bloodshed in two attacks yesterday that killed more than 70 people less than three months before US troops are set to withdraw from all Iraqi cities and major towns.
In the deadliest strike, at least 47 people — including many Iranians — were killed when a suicide bomber struck a restaurant in the town of Muqdadiyah northeast of Baghdad, a military official said. The official said 55 people were wounded in the building, which was packed with Iranian visitors on their way to Kerbala.
The bombing took place in the ethnically and religiously mixed Diyala province.
Another 31 people were killed in a suicide attack on police distributing food aid to displaced people sheltering in an abandoned building in southeastern Baghdad. An Interior Ministry official said the dead included 10 policemen and five children.
