New Tape Says Zarqawi Death 'Great Loss'

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/06/16/ap2821382.html

New Tape Says Zarqawi Death 'Great Loss'


A key insurgency leader in Iraq said the U.S. killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a "great loss," but one that will strengthen the militants' determination, according to an audio tape broadcast Friday.

The Al-Jazeera network said the voice on the tape was that of Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, the head of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, which groups five Iraqi insurgent organizations including al-Qaida in Iraq. But the authenticity of the tape couldn't immediately be verified.

"This is a message to the enemies of God, the crusaders, the rejectionists and the renegades," the voice says, referring respectively the US-led forces, the Shiites, and the Sunnis in the Iraqi government.

"The martyrdom of the leader will not change the arena of confrontation. Rather, it will become fiercer and stronger," the speaker says, referring to the death of al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida in Iraq leader who was killed in a U.S. airstrike on a house north of Baghdad where he was meeting his advisers on June 7.