New Zarqawi claims surface

2005-05-29 20:58

Dubai - Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is overseeing a response to a security push launched by Iraqi forces against rebels in Baghdad, an internet statement attributed to his group said on Sunday.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement, the latest in a series of sometimes conflicting messages about the health of the Jordanian-born extremist and his role in the insurgency.

"Squadrons and brigades directed by the sheikh of the mujehadeen Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on Sunday launched an operation... planned and supervised by our sheikh," said the statement.

The operation was a reply to the "aborted encirclement plan in Baghdad announced by the Iraqi ministers of defence and interior," it said, in a reference to the bid by involving thousands of Iraqi security forces to throw a security net over Baghdad.

Previous statements have said Iraq's most wanted man was wounded and command had passed to a deputy, while another message Friday said he was in good health and directing insurgent operations.

The new message was signed by the "information chief" of the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Land of Two Rivers, Abu Maisara al-Iraqi, whose name has been beneath several of the messages sent over the past week.

It said that the counter-operation to the Iraqi government's "Operation Lightning" had been christened "the conquest of the martyr Abderrahman al-Basri," a leading insurgency figure killed in the one-time rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

"It is also a reply to the arrests and tortures inflicted by the apostates on Sunni Muslims at Abu Ghraib (the notorious prison west of Baghdad)," it said.

"Your brothers in the al-Qaeda organisation in the Land of Two Rivers will continue their jihad until victory or until martyrdom," it added.

The message also comes after The Sunday Times newspaper reported that Zarqawi was moved to Iran after a US air strike left him with shrapnel lodged in his chest, a charge fiercely denied by Tehran.

General Richard Myers, the outgoing chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said on Sunday that the United States "tends to believe" the claims that Zarqawi has been wounded.

The Iraqi government said that 500 people had been arrested in "Operation Lightning", an unprecedented domestic sweep of the capital's most dangerous neighbourhoods.

The group also published six other statements claiming attacks across Iraq.

Most significantly, it said it was behind a suicide bombing at a checkpoint south of Baghdad that killed nine Iraqi soldiers and wounded three others.

According to the Iraqi defence ministry the suicide bomber ploughed his car bomb into an army roadblock between Yusufiyah and Mahmudiyah that had been set up as part of "Operation Lightning".

- AFP