|
||||||||||||||||
U.S. military: Al Qaeda leader in Mosul capturedAbu Talha 'gave up without a fight'
RELATED
SPECIAL REPORT Interactive: Who's who in Iraq
Interactive: Sectarian divide
Timeline: Bloodiest days for civilians
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSBAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military on Thursday reported the capture of a man described as al Qaeda's leader in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston identified him as Abu Talha -- whose actual name is Muhammad Khalaf Shakar -- and said he was captured on Tuesday. "Talha has been one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's most trusted operations agents in Iraq," Alston said. "This is a major defeat for the al Qaeda organization in Iraq." "Numerous reports indicated he wore a suicide vest 24 hours a day and stated that he would never surrender. Instead, Talha gave up without a fight," Alston said. Talha surrendered to multinational forces in a quiet neighborhood in Mosul, Alston said, after information from Iraqi civilians contributed to his capture. Civilians providing such information indicates they are taking steps against the "increasingly unpopular insurgency," he said. Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, wanted by U.S.-led forces for terrorist attacks in Iraq, pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden in October. The United States has posted a $25 million bounty for al-Zarqawi's capture or death. Also on Thursday, a car bomb exploded at an oil facility in Kirkuk and wounded at least five Iraqi soldiers, an Iraqi military commander said. The bomb, apparently targeting an Iraqi army convoy, hit an entrance to the Northern Oil Co., a state-run company responsible for the drilling, transport, and refining of Iraqi crude. In Baghdad on Thursday, a remotely detonated car bomb wounded five Iraqi soldiers and an Iraqi civilian, Iraqi police said. On Baghdad's airport road, a suicide car bomb struck a police commando patrol Thursday, killing four commandos and wounding 22, police said. The attack vehicle was a BMW carrying at least 200 kilograms of explosives, police said. Iraqi securityDuring his Thursday news conference, Gen. Alston also said coalition troops are learning lessons from two recent deadly attacks involving infiltration of Iraqi security forces. Suicide bombers made their way onto two Iraqi bases, killing 23 soldiers at a dining facility at an Iraqi army post in Khalis on Wednesday and three Wolf Brigade police commandos in Baghdad on Saturday. In the Saturday killings, Alston said the attacker was "a murderer who, in fact, had found a way to get credentials ... and then he used those credentials to get the access that he did and to perform that deed." Regarding the bombing at the Iraqi base on Wednesday, Alston said the bomber was "an impostor wearing Iraqi army clothes, going into a restaurant, sitting down at a table waiting for more officers to come in so that he could optimize the lethality that was wrapped around his body and cause as much death and destruction as he could." Alston said the attack "speaks to a need to improve force protection procedures around these facilities to preclude that from happening." Other developmentsCNN's Jane Arraf, with troops in Anbar province, contributed to this report, along with CNN's Chris Burns, Jennifer Eccleston, Kevin Flower, Ayman Mohyeldin, Kianne Sadeq and Mohammed Tawfeeq.
|
|
© 2007 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. |
|