U.S. Tracks Aide to Zarqawi’s Doom; Bush Says the War Is Far From Over

The trail that led to the death of Abu Musab Zarqawi began with a tip gleaned from inside his Al Qaeda in Iraq organization, military sources said Thursday.

An intelligence source, probably a detainee or defector, revealed that the key insurgent target was often accompanied by a religious advisor named Sheik Abdel Rashid Rahman.

U.S. troops, including special operations soldiers, then used intelligence and electronic surveillance to track Rahman for at least six weeks until he led them Wednesday evening to an isolated house near the village of Hibhib, eight miles west of Baqubah.

Rahman arrived at the house, a two-story stucco or concrete structure with a window in front, about 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, U.S. officials said.

Grainy footage, taken from aboard one of two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets dispatched to the area, shows a house between two large date palm groves. One of the planes dropped a 500-pound bomb striking the target with an X-shaped burst of rising smoke. Seconds later, as they circled far above the burning site, the same plane dropped another 500-pound bomb, shaking the camera and darkening its image for a moment.

Zarqawi died inside the house, U.S. officials said, along with at least five other people, including Rahman, a woman and a child of unspecified age.

The Jordanian-born insurgent leader was the most wanted man in Iraq, with the U.S. government offering a $25-million reward for information leading to his death or capture.

Zarqawi, also known as Ahmed Khalayleh, was believed responsible for hundreds of deaths. He claimed to have been behind such bloody acts as the beheadings of American Nicholas Berg and Briton Ken Bigley and the bombing of the United Nations compound in the summer of 2003 that killed 22 people, including U.N. Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Zarqawi’s death represented a victory for intelligence efforts in Iraq by the U.S. and its allies. Officials in Jordan, which suffered a string of hotel bombings last year for which Zarqawi took responsibility, said they played a key role in the manhunt.

In Washington, President Bush delivered a six-minute statement about the death of the Iraq insurgency’s icon.

“Now Zarqawi has met his end, and this violent man will never murder again,” Bush said.

But the president also cautioned that Zarqawi’s death would not quell the violence in Iraq.

“Zarqawi is dead, but the difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues,” he said, adding that insurgents would “carry on without him” and that sectarian violence would continue.

Two pictures of Zarqawi’s body displayed Thursday by the U.S. military showed the battered face of the Sunni Arab militant. In one of the images, blood could be seen emerging from his nostrils. The top of his shoulders, barely visible in the photograph, were also bloody. He appeared to be lying on a concrete surface, which was covered with blood.

In the other photo, taken four hours later, Zarqawi’s head appeared to be resting on a white towel. In both images, his forehead and cheek bore red bruises and abrasions. His eyes were closed.

“We were on his trail; we have been for some time,” said Iraqi Army Lt. Gen. Nasier Abadi, an officer posted in Baqubah. “Over a month we received a good lead, and Wednesday we struck gold.”

U.S. officials declined to reveal further details about how they tracked down the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, citing their concern for operational integrity for future strikes against the militant group.

But interviews with officials in Washington, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, indicate that the raid occurred after a lengthy multinational intelligence effort utilizing interrogations, informants and reporting by U.S. forces.

In the last month, several suspected key Al Qaeda operatives in and around Iraq had been arrested and interrogated. Among them was Kassim Ani, a Zarqawi aide believed to be behind some of the deadliest attacks in Baghdad, who was captured there by Iraqi security forces late last month.

Days earlier, Al Qaeda operative Ziad Khalaf Raja Karbouly was detained in Jordan, where he confessed on television to kidnapping Moroccan Embassy workers and killing a Jordanian truck driver on Zarqawi’s orders.

A Jordanian official speaking on condition of anonymity said Thursday that intelligence his country provided to American officials played a decisive role in the Zarqawi raid by helping them identify Rahman, known in Iraq as the mufti of the militant group.

“Yes, this was part of our ongoing efforts to share information with the U.S. about Zarqawi and Al Qaeda,” the official said.

U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said Thursday that many countries had provided useful information to American forces combating Al Qaeda in Iraq, but singled out Jordan’s efforts for special praise.

“Jordan is an extremely good friend and partner and a good friend of the Iraqis as they fight this war on terrorism,” he said.

Al Qaeda’s targeting of Arab governments that are friendly with the U.S., including Jordan and Egypt, had spurred those countries to target Zarqawi, said Raanan Gissin, an official in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office. Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the deaths of at least 60 people in the nearly simultaneous bombings of three luxury hotels in Amman, the Jordanian capital, in November.

In Washington, counterterrorism officials said the key break in the hunt for Zarqawi came several weeks ago when U.S. intelligence analysts were able to conclude that Rahman was likely to lead U.S.-led forces to the militant leader.

One U.S. official said the CIA was eventually able to intercept Rahman’s direct communications with Zarqawi, which ultimately revealed that the two were planning to meet Wednesday.

Little is known about Rahman, who terrorism experts believe uses an alias, other than that he first appeared in Iraq a year ago during a reorganization of Al Qaeda in Iraq. After top leaders of Al Qaeda believed to be hiding near the AfghanPakistani border issued statements criticizing Zarqawi for using too many foreigners in his operations and others questioned his relentless attacks against Shiite Muslims and Iraqi civilians, the Iraq-based militant group formed a new leadership council.

Terrorism experts in Israel and Jordan said that Rahman was on the council and was one of several Zarqawi associates who posted statements last year on militant websites offering religious justifications for operations by Al Qaeda in Iraq. Rahman signed his statements “Abdel Rahman Al Iraqi,” or “Abdel Rahman The Iraqi,” to project an image of a home-grown insurgent force, terrorism experts said.

Caldwell, however, said Thursday that he believed Rahman was a foreigner, though he did not know his nationality.

A U.S. Special Forces team assigned to track Zarqawi arrived Wednesday in the Diyala province village of Arab Shoka, six miles northwest of Baqubah, and sought the assistance of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers stationed in the area northeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi army official in Baqubah said.

The intelligence official said the force raided several houses in the town and in nearby Hibhib before the bombing that killed Zarqawi.

The house was a good hiding place, the official said, isolated on a date palm farm and accessible only by a road nearby.

One U.S. official said that Rahman was followed Wednesday by an unmanned Predator drone aircraft until he entered the house. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said that Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. military official in Iraq, gave the order to strike the house.

“They had been tracking Zarqawi, and they came to the conclusion that they could not really go in on the ground without running the risk of having him escape, so they used airpower and attacked the dwelling that he was in having a meeting,” Rumsfeld said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary North, head of the Central Command Air Forces who oversees military air operations in Iraq, said that two F-16s were flying a routine mission when they were told to attack a “high value target.” He said the planes flew to the location and lingered above the village.

“We knew exactly where he was,” said North, speaking with Pentagon reporters via telephone from Qatar. “We took our time to ensure everything was correct. The pilots watched the area with their targeting pods ... to see if any other people were coming into the meeting before we chose to drop.”

U.S. officials declined to reveal how they knew Zarqawi was in the house.

The pilot of one of the F-16s first dropped a laser-guided bomb, a GBU-12, on the house, and then a bomb guided by a global positioning system, a GBU-38, North said.

The weapons, he said, were released from a “medium altitude,” perhaps from four or five miles away. Despite the distant roar of the F-16s, North said, he doubted that Zarqawi knew he was being watched or targeted.

The two bombs exploded within seconds of each other, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and smoke. In the cockpit video, dozens of palm trees could be seen burning around the shattered structure.

Iraqi officials, including a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, said that Zarqawi initially survived the blast, but died after Iraqi police arrived. U.S. officials said that the militant was dead by the time they arrived moments later.

Caldwell said that U.S. forces recognized Zarqawi’s face, but fingerprinted him to be sure it was him.

Jordanian authorities had such extensive information on Zarqawi because he was in prison there from 1993 to 1999, after they discovered bombs and firearms in his home.

U.S. officials confirmed the identity of the body about 3:30 a.m. Thursday. They expect further confirmation from DNA test results this weekend.

One photo displayed by the military was time-marked 6:17 and the other 10:31. Officials said that the time on the first photo, which would have been within minutes of when they said the bombs were dropped, was incorrect.

U.S. officials said that in the hours after the airstrike, American and Iraqi forces conducted 17 raids in and around Baghdad, arresting an undisclosed number of people.

Moore reported from Baghdad and Miller from Washington. Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Laura King in Jerusalem, Peter Spiegel in Brussels, Josh Meyer, Julian E. Barnes and James Gerstenzang in Washington and special correspondents in Baqubah.