Troops get tip-off on Zarqawi

2004-11-23 15:27

Kirkuk - Security forces were on Tuesday focussing their hunt for Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on an area in north-central Iraq after receiving a tip-off, an Iraqi national guard officer said.

"We received concrete information from very reliable sources that Zarqawi was transferred today (Tuesday) to Tuz Khormatu and is heading to Baquba," staff brigadier general Anwar Hamad Ameed, the national guard chief in the northern city of Kirkuk, told AFP.

He gave no further details.

Tuz Khormatu lies about 180km north of Baghdad.

The US military believes Zarqawi, who has a $25m bounty on his head, had been using the rebel stronghold of Fallujah, west of the capital, as a safe haven but that he escaped the city before a US-led assault this month.

In October his group pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and changed its name from Al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) to The al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Country of Two Rivers (Iraq).

Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for many of the most ferocious attacks in Iraq, including car bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.

- AFP