Iraq:US forces in Iraq said yesterday that they had killed the mastermind of an attack on a Shia shrine last year which triggered the worst phase of the country's spiral into sectarian violence.
Haitham al-Badri, said to be the al-Qaeda leader in Salahuddin province, had been blamed for the 2006 attack on Samarra's al-Askari mosque, which inspired widespread revenge killings and is seen as having been the trigger for the war's most violent phase, when an insurgency mainly of Sunnis against US forces turned into a sectarian conflict pitting Iraq's main communities against each other.
US military spokesman Rear-Admiral Mark Fox told a news conference that Badri and several other gunmen had been strafed by a helicopter after they were seen preparing an ambush east of Samarra.
A week-long Iraqi police crackdown on al-Qaeda in Samarra has netted 80 suspects, according to US sources. Among the al-Qaeda figures reported captured in the area were the group's leaders for Samarra and Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein.
The US military said last week that it had killed the al-Qaeda leader in Mosul, in Nineveh province further north.
US and Iraqi officials frequently say they have killed or captured leading al-Qaeda figures, and the precise role any particular individual may have played in the shadowy group is often difficult to assess.
Washington says that its military strategy of sending 30,000 additional troops to Iraq this year and spreading them in neighbourhoods is having success, but it has complained about the failure of Iraqi politicians to make progress at the same time.
Meanwhile, violence against civilians is continuing. A barrage of mortars at dawn killed at least 11 people while residents were queuing for fuel at a Baghdad petrol station. Police said yesterday that they had found 21 corpses dumped throughout the city.
In Baquba, north of Baghdad, police said they had found 60 decomposed bodies dumped in thick grass. There was no indication of how they had been killed, police said.
Iraqi political leaders are due to meet this week to try to salvage a governing coalition which was supposed to help end sectarian violence by including members of all of Iraq's major groups but which has failed to enact laws Washington says are vital to reconciliation.
- (Reuters)