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Iraq: Fallujah sheikh says Zarqawi died on Friday The
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq -
died on Friday and his body is in Fallujah's cemetary, an Iraqi Sunni
sheikh, Ammar Abdel Rahim Nasir, has told the Saudi on-line newspaper
Al-Medina. He claims that gunfights which broke out in Fallujah in
the last few days involved militants trying to protect the insurgency
leader's tomb from a group of American soldiers patrolling the area.
Sheikh Nasir's claims that Zarqawi is dead appear to correspond with
reports several weeks ago that al-Zarqawi had been injured and taken
to Ramadi hospital for emergency treatment, and with messages on the
Internet talking of two Arab doctors accompanying him. Al-Zarqawi was
reported to have been seen at the hospital on April 27. The
hospital's director told an Iraq-based newspaper that US troops later
surrounded and raided the entire building, searching for the
Jordanian militant.
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During a telephone conversation from the city of Fallujah with the
Saudi newspaper, Nasir said al-Zarqawi was taken there after being
injured in the city of Ramadi around three weeks ago, and may have
been treated by two doctors who had worked with his aides in Baghdad.
He said the two doctors had stopped a serious hemorrhage in al-
Zarqawi's intestines, but that after his condition worsened last
week, the militant died on Friday.
Nasir adds that in his will the insurgent leader left the order that
no funeral should be held for him and the right to announce his death
should be left to the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan and Osama
bin Laden.
The Al-Medina newspaper reports that it also called the headmaster of
a school in Fallujah, who preferred to remain anonymous, but
confirmed that many people in the city were aware of the fact that al-
Zarqawi had recently been taken to the city.
Sheikh Nasir's claims that Zarqawi is dead appear to correspond with
reports several weeks ago that al-Zarqawi had been injured and taken
to Ramadi hospital for emergency treatment, and with messages on the
Internet talking of two Arab doctors accompanying him. Al-Zarqawi was
reported to have been seen at the hospital on April 27. The
hospital's director told an Iraq-based newspaper that US troops later
surrounded and raided the entire building, searching for the
Jordanian militant.
Only two days ago, an audio message attributed to al-Zarqawi was
posted on the Internet, in which he assured his followers that he had
only been lightly injured. Following the message, the US defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned countries neighboring Iraq not to
give any medical assistance to al-Zarqawi. "Our current theory is
that he is in Iraq," he said. "Were a neighboring country to take him
in and provide medical assistance or haven for him, they obviously
would be associating themselves with a major linkage in the al-Qaeda
network, and a person who has a great deal of blood on his hands,"
Rumsfeld continued. "And that's something that people would want to
take note of."
Story Credits: ADNKI
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