US and Iraqi officials chased reports that the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed by rivals north of Baghdad. But US authorities urged caution and warned that even if the claim were true, the death of the shadowy Abu Ayyub al-Masri would not spell the end of the terror movement in Iraq.
Reports of al-Masri's death first emerged from the Interior Ministry, which said the al-Qaeda leader was gunned down by rivals in his movement on Tuesday at a bridge near Lake Tharthar just north of Baghdad, where the US military believes al-Qaeda operates training camps.
Later, however, ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Khalaf said al-Masri's death had not been confirmed. Another senior official, Major General Hussein Kamal, told the press that "we are trying to investigate and confirm the report."
Other Iraqi officials said word of the purported death came from an informant and that efforts were under way to retrieve the body. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is sensitive.
An al-Qaeda front organization denied that al-Masri, an Egyptian also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer with a US$1 million bounty on his head, had been killed. The Islamic State of Iraq said in a Web statement that al-Masri was "alive and still fighting the enemy of God."
But the statement, posted on an extremist Web site, offered no evidence to support the claim. Al-Masri assumed leadership of al-Qaeda after his charismatic predecessor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a US airstrike last June.
Late on Tuesday, the leader of a Sunni Arab group opposed to al-Qaeda told Iraqi television that his fighters tracked down and killed al-Masri along with seven of his aides, two of them Saudis.
"Eyewitnesses confirmed his death and their corpses are still at the scene," said Abdul-Sattar al-Rishawi, head of the Anbar Salvation Council.
Iraqi officials have released similar reports about the killing or capture of top insurgent figures, only to acknowledge later that the claims were inaccurate. With the Iraqis' track record, US officials advised caution.
"We've heard the report on al-Masri," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "We're trying with the Iraqis to confirm whether or not it's true. I think we don't know the answer to that at this point."
US Ambassador Ryan Crocker said al-Masri's death would be a positive development, but he played down suggestions it would spell the end of the terror threat in Iraq.
"Clearly taking a major terrorist off the battlefield is an important thing and if we can confirm it, if this did happen, without question it would be a significant and positive development," Crocker told reporters in Washington via a teleconference.
"That said, I would not expect it to in any way bring to an end al-Qaeda's activities in Iraq," he added. "My sense is that it is now a very decentralized terrorist effort, so while removing its current head would be a good and positive thing, I think we have to expect that we will need to continue dealing with further al-Qaeda attacks."
The report of al-Masri's death occurred at a time when al-Qaeda is locked in a violent power struggle with other Sunni insurgents angry over its effort to dominate the movement and over the role of foreigners in the terror network.
More than 200 Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province have decided to form a political party to oppose al-Qaeda.
Clashes have erupted between al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups, notably the nationalist 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Islamic Army in Iraq, in at least three provinces, US officers say.
The decision to declare the Islamic State of Iraq under the leadership of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was widely seen as an effort by al-Qaeda to put an Iraqi face on the movement. Al-Masri is the "war minister" of the self-declared state.
That move, however, did little to ease tensions among the insurgent groups.
Last month, al-Baghdadi urged militants in an audiotape to stop fighting one another and unite against US forces. He told rival groups he wanted to end their disagreements and vowed to punish any of his fighters who kill other militants.
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