U.S. and Iraqi authorities said Tuesday their forces had killed the No. 2 official in the Al Qaeda in Iraq organization in a weekend raid in Baghdad, claiming to have struck a “painful blow” to the country’s most feared insurgent group.
Abdullah Abu Azzam led Al Qaeda’s operations in Baghdad, planning a brutal wave of suicide bombings in the capital since April, killing hundreds of people–including police, army recruits and day laborers, officials said.
According to an Associated Press tally, 698 people have been killed and 1,579 have been wounded since April 1 in suicide attacks in Baghdad.
He also controlled the finances for foreign fighters that flowed into Iraq to join the insurgency.
Abu Azzam, who a government spokesman said was an Iraqi, was the top deputy to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Abu Azzam was on a list of Iraq’s 29 most-wanted insurgents issued by the U.S. military in February and had a bounty of $50,000 on his head.
Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba called the killing of Abu Azzam a “painful blow” to Al Qaeda, but warned that the group would likely carry out revenge attacks.
Abu Azzam was killed early Sunday when U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a high-rise apartment building in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, told the AP.
“They went in to capture him, he did not surrender, and he was killed in the raid,” Boylan said.
Al Qaeda in Iraq denied that Abu Azzam was the No. 2 leader of the organization and said “it was not confirmed” that he was killed.
Elsewhere, a suicide bomber attacked Iraqis applying for jobs as police officers Tuesday in Baqouba, 30 miles north of Baghdad, killing nine and wounding 21.
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Compiled from news services and edited by Cara Dipasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and alBerto Trevino (atrevino@tribune.com)
