Iraq says local al Qaeda leader has been killed (again)

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD, April 19 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that an Iraqi intelligence team had found and killed al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

Maliki said the team also killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported leader of al Qaeda's local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, in an operation backed by U.S. forces.

If confirmed, the deaths would be a major blow to Iraq's stubborn insurgency at a delicate time.

The country, only just emerging from a brutal sectarian war but still wracked by suicide bombings and other attacks, held a milestone election on March 7 that produced no clear winner.


Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE63I1NN.htm

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From 2007:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1733972.ece

Top al-Qaeda leader ‘killed by Iraqi insurgents angry at bloody tactics’

The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq has been killed in a battle with a rival Sunni militant group, Iraqi officials claimed yesterday, almost a year after he assumed command of the terrorist network.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri was hunted relentlessly by American forces, who dubbed him public enemy No 1 and put a $5 million bounty on his head. He was hated by the Shia, whom he slaughtered in their thousands with car bombs. He was finally killed at the hands of his fellow Sunni hardliners, the Interior Ministry said.

and...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/world/africa/18iht-iraq.4.6718200.html

Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says

BAGHDAD — For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.

As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.

On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed.

Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.

Damn.

The guy has more lives than Jason. :crazy:

Which is why we have killed "Al Queda's top man in Iraq" something like 50 times now.

Al Qaeda's two top Iraq leaders killed in raid

Both al-Masri and al-Baghdadi reported killed.

.

Iraq says fictional local al Qaeda leader has been killed (again and again)

Can't decide which one I like better.

I swear it's got to be. You buy a kit for $500. It's got a big stack of application forms, an AK-47 and a copy of 1001 Fiendish Plans in it. When you get in you're a Number Six guy.

You then run around showing the plan to everyone you know who's pissed off at the West. After you start some legs in your downline, you become a Number Five guy. When those people start downlines of their own, you move up in the organization. Eventually you'll become a Number One guy. Read Merchants of Deception to see how it works. That book's actually about Amway, but there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between AQ and Amway--after all, it's been a long time since anyone saw either Rich De Vos or Osama bin Laden.