May 02 2007 at 09:36AM
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By Ammar Karim
Baghdad - The Iraqi government and its tribal allies were scouring dangerous territory on Wednesday for evidence to prove their claims that Al-Qaeda's Iraq chief had been killed in a clash between armed factions.
Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, the interior ministry's operations director, admitted Iraq has still not acquired any body or human remains to back up intelligence reports that Abu Ayyub al-Masri is dead.
"So far we don't yet have it, but there are efforts underway to look for the body," said Khalaf, whose claim 24 hours earlier that Masri had been killed was scorned by Al-Qaeda and treated with caution by his US allies.
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A coalition of Sunni tribes that has vowed to defeat Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for Masri's alleged death, claiming that they tracked him to an area just north of Baghdad on Tuesday and killed him in a dawn ambush.
"We have evidence and eyewitnesses and our contacts with the tribes there all confirm the killing," said Hamid al-Hayis, head of the Anbar Salvation Council, the armed wing of the Anbar Awakening, an alliance of sheikhs.
Hayis said finding proof of the deaths of Masri and a small group of fellow Al-Qaeda militants was proving difficult, because the orchards and villages of the Nibae area near Taji are still partly controlled by insurgents.
"The area is still under their control, early this morning we sent an armed group to scout the situation, but we haven't heard back from them yet," he told AFP, in a telephone interview.
According to US commanders, Masri - who is said to be a veteran Egyptian jihadi and car bomb expert - took control of Al-Qaeda's Iraqi franchise in June last year after the death of his predecessor Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Since then, he has been reported killed or wounded several times, and Tuesday's new report has been greeted with caution by the US military.
"I am still not aware of any evidence or presentation of remains or anything like that," US spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Chris Garver told AFP. "We are conducting dialogue with our Iraqi counterparts."
Al-Qaeda scornfully dismissed the claim in an Internet message.
Any confirmation of Masri's death would be a welcome piece of good news for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government, which this week is due to host a conference of world powers and Iraq's neighbours in Egypt.
The beleaguered government will ask both the permanent members of the UN Security Council and its neighbours - especially Iran and Syria - for more political support and assistance in choking off funds for militants.
Maliki's main foreign ally, US President George Bush, is fighting political battles of his own on the domestic front, where there is mounting pressure for him to set a date to begin to bring American troops home.
On Tuesday, Bush vetoed a bill sent by the Democrat controlled Congress which would have tied funding for the military to a withdrawal timetable.
"Members of the House and Senate passed a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders. So, a few minutes ago, I vetoed the bill," Bush said in Washington.
"Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure, and that would be irresponsible," he said as protesters outside the White House chanted "Stop the war now!" and "How many more will die?"
Bush had long pledged to defy Congress by rejecting the bill, which was to allocate $124-billion dollars (about R872-billion) in emergency funding for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The measure linked the funds to a call for US combat troops to start coming home by October 1, and for most of them to be withdrawn by March 2008.
Iraqi and American troops are engaged in a massive security operation in and around the Iraqi capital in a bid to quell sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shi'a factions long enough to allow Maliki to start governing.
The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has promised to present a review of the results of this so-called "surge" in September, and has warned that the operation will take months to complete. - Sapa-AFP
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