Al Qaeda in Iraq leader killed: Interior MinistryTue May 1, 2007BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq was killed on Tuesday in a fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said, but the U.S. military said it could not confirm the report.
There has been growing friction between Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups over al Qaeda's indiscriminate killing of civilians and its imposition of an austere brand of Islam in the areas where it holds sway.
If true, the death of Abu Ayyub al-Masri would signal a deepening split at a time when the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is trying to woo some insurgent groups into the political process.
Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier-General Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said Masri was killed in a battle near a bridge in the small town of al-Nibayi, north of Baghdad.
"We have definite intelligence reports that al Masri was killed today," he said.
Both Khalaf and another Interior Ministry source said the Iraqi authorities did not have Masri's body, but the source added that "our people had seen the body".
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters he understood Masri had been killed on Monday.
We too have security and intelligence reports that Abu Ayyub al-Masri was killed as a result of fighting between insurgents and al Qaeda yesterday near Taji," Salih said, referring to a town north of Baghdad.
The other Interior Ministry source said Masri, who is believed to be an Egyptian, had been killed in what he described as "probably score-settling within al Qaeda".
The U.S. military was checking the reports, said Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver, a spokesman.
"We are in discussions with the Iraqis over how they obtained this intelligence. If we do have a body, we are going to conduct DNA tests, and that will take several days. If there is no body, that makes it harder," Garver said.
CIVIL WAR FEARS
In February, Interior Ministry sources said Masri had been wounded in a gunbattle north of Baghdad, but those reports turned out not to be true. There were also reports in October that he had been killed, which again were incorrect.
Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006.
Officials had hoped the demise of Zarqawi might have weakened al Qaeda, but he was quickly replaced by Masri and the group's attacks continued unabated.
U.S. and Iraqi officials accuse al Qaeda of trying to tip Iraq into full-scale civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs with a campaign of spectacular car bombs attacks that have killed thousands.
Iraqi officials also blame al Qaeda for destroying a holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra a year ago, an act that unleashed a surge in sectarian bloodletting.
The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said last week that al Qaeda was now "probably public enemy number one" in Iraq.
The Pentagon had previously called anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia the greatest threat to peace in Iraq.
The United States has a $5 million bounty on Masri's head.
He has been described by the U.S. military as a former close Zarqawi associate who trained in Afghanistan and formed al Qaeda's first cell in Baghdad.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Dean Yates and Waleed Ibrahim)
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