Aide to Al-Qaeda's Zarqawi Killed in Iraq, U.S. Says
Abu Azzam, a senior aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the No. 2 al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, was shot dead in an apartment in Baghdad Sunday night.
Azzam ``was a significant al-Qaeda leader,'' Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said yesterday. The Iraqi Government may release a statement on Azzam's death, Whitman said.
Also known as Abdallah Nahim or Abu Selwah, Azzam's real name was Abdallah Muhammed Al-Juhaari, U.S. military spokeswoman Lieutenant Michelle Lunato said today in a telephone interview from Baghdad. He was called the al-Qaeda Emir in Baghdad, she said, and had a $50,000 U.S. bounty on his head.
The effect on the insurgency remains to be seen as the death or capture of key al-Zarqawi deputies in the past hasn't led to a decrease in the number of suicide bombings in Iraq.
U.S.-led troops and members of the Iraqi Security Forces raided an apartment in a residential high-rise building in the capital at 4:50 a.m. on Sept. 25 in response to a tip, according to Lunato. They intended to arrest him ``but they were fired upon and returned fire, killing Azzam,'' she said.
An unidentified person was injured in the fighting, Lunato said. Azzam is believed to have been Palestinian and may have entered Iraq in April 2005, Agence France-Presse quoted National Security Advisor Muwafiq al-Rubaie as saying today.