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Zarqawi's death`highly unlikely' in Mosul gunfight

Children ride bicycles past a poster depicting a man painting over a portrait of al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi which reads ``For the sake of life -- Stop the terror,'' in Baghdad yesterday. PHOTO: AP

US forces left a cordoned area around a house in the northern city of Mosul yesterday where eight suspected al-Qaeda members died in a gunfight last weekend, and the White House said it was "highly unlikely" that the terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.

North of the capital, Diyala provincial police said a car bomb targeting US Humvees killed five civilians and wounded 12 bystanders in the town of Kanan. At least 145 Iraqi civilians have died in a series of attacks over the last four days, including two bombings at Shiite mosques and another at a funeral in religiously mixed Diyala Province.

Attacks

In Baghdad, three people, including one police officer, were killed by gunmen, police said.

Over the weekend a US soldier near the capital and a Marine in the western town of Karmah were killed in separate insurgent attacks, the military said. In the southern city of Basra, a British soldier was killed and four others wounded by a roadside bomb.

During the intense gunbattle with suspected al-Qaeda members on Saturday, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were also wounded, the US military said.

On Saturday, police Brigadier General Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house.

However, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible." Eyewitnesses in Mosul said the US military, which had cordoned off the area around the two-story house, left the area early yesterday.

"We have no indication that Zarqawi was killed in this fight and we continue operations to search for him," said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a US military spokesman.

The elusive al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture in the past. US forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.

The US military also said on Sunday that 24 people -- including another Marine and 15 civilians -- were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint US-Iraqi patrol in Haditha, west of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.

The three American deaths brought to at least 2,094 the number of US service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.

Reconciliation

Meanwhile, in Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's president said on Sunday he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and he called on the Sunni-led insurgency to lay down its arms and join the political process.

But President Jalal Talabani, attending an Arab League-sponsored reconciliation conference, insisted that the Iraqi government would not meet with Baath Party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency.

In Baghdad, hundreds of Sunnis on Sunday demanded an end to the torture of detainees and called for the international community to pressure Iraqi and US authorities to ensure that such abuse does not occur. Iraq's Shiite-led government has promised an investigation.
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