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Zarqawi Killed In US Air Raid
Al-Qaeda's top man in Iraq, Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been killed in an air raid, according to Iraq's prime minister.
Nuri al-Maliki announced this morning that the terrorist's remains had been identified "visually and via fingerprints." Details of the circumstances surrounding his death will be revealed later today, though US military sources say he was killed in a strike on an isolated "safe house" on Wednesday evening.
Al-Qaeda fighters commanded and inspired by Zarqawi have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians, security forces and US military forces in Iraq. Zarqawi himself was also said to be behind the gruesome beheading cult that gripped the country in 2004 and 2005. Videos of masked men decapitating western hostages were distributed on the internet and circulated among radicals and terror sympathisers in the Arab world and the west. The terror leader himself was believed to have carried out some of the executions.
Prime minister Maliki announcement of the terrorist's demise ("Today Zarqawi has been terminated") met with applause in Baghdad. Maliki urged Iraqis to join in a dialogue on the country's future, though he warned that “Every time a Zarqawi appears we will kill him... we will continue confronting whoever follows his path. It is an open war between us.”
He added that information from Iraqi civilians led to the strike. A reward of $25 million has been offered for information leading to Zarqawi - there's no news yet if the reward has been claimed.
The US ambassador to Iraq notes that Zarqawi's death is unlikely to reduce the violence in Iraq, at least in the short term. The removal of the most bloodthirsty of terror leaders, however, will be read as a rare moment of good news for allied forces in the region.
