BAGHDAD - The leader of
al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was arrested in the northern
city of Mosul, the Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
Mohammed al-Askari said
the arrest of al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was
confirmed to him by the Iraqi commander of the province. There was no
immediate confirmation or comment from U.S. forces on the arrest.
The U.S. military in
Baghdad said "we are currently checking with Iraqi authorities to
confirm the accuracy of this information."
Interior Ministry
spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said that Mosul police
"arrested one of al-Qaida's leaders at midnight and during the
primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir."
News of the arrest was
also reported by Iraqi state television and Arab satellite TV
stations.
The state channel,
Iraqiya, said that Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani would reward
Mosul police for the capture.
Interior Ministry
spokesman Khalaf told the station by phone that a source close to the
al-Qaida leader informed Mosul police that al-Masri would be at a
house in the city's Wadi Hajar area at midnight Wednesday.
"The police raided
this house and arrested him. During the primary investigation, he
confessed that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir, the leader of Al-Qaida in
Iraq. Now a broader investigation of him is being conducted," he
said to Iraqiya.
If confirmed, the
arrest would represent a major blow to al-Qaida in Iraq, which has
been on the run for the past year following a shift in alliances by
Sunni tribesmen in western Anbar province, and elsewhere, and an
influx of thousands of U.S. troops.
The U.S. military
considers the organization its number one enemy in Iraq.
"The commander of
Ninevah military operations informed me that Iraqi troops captured Abu
Hamza al-Muhajir the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq," al-Askari told
The Associated Press by telephone.
He did not have any
further details nor did he say when the al-Qaida leader was arrested.
Mosul is currently a
major battleground for U.S. forces and al-Qaida.
Ninevah governor Duraid
Kashmola also said by phone that al-Masri had been arrested.
Al-Masri, an Egyptian
militant, took over al-Qaida in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was
killed June 7, 2006 in a U.S. airstrike northeast of Baghdad.
The Islamic State of
Iraq, an umbrella organization that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, last
year announced an "Islamic Cabinet" for Iraq and named al-Masri
as "minister of war."
U.S. officials said al-Masri
joined an extremist group led by al-Qaida's No.2 official in 1982. He
joined al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan in 1999 and trained as a
car bombing expert before traveling to Iraq after the U.S.-led
invasion in 2003.
Few details are known
about him, but he is believed to have been born in 1969 in Egypt's
Nile Delta province of El-Sharqiya. He reportedly left school in the
early 1980s to join Islamic Jihad, a group that opposed Egypt's
pro-American government and linked to the 1981 assassination of
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
According to associates
in Afghanistan, al-Masri has been involved in Islamic extremist
movements since 1982, when he joined Islamic Jihad, a terror group led
by Ayman al-Zawahri, who became bin Laden's chief deputy.
Al-Masri fought with
Muslim rebels against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and
later ran al-Qaida training camps there.
