Al Qaeda leader held in Mosul

BAGHDAD — Iraqi police commandos captured the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq in a raid in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said yesterday, in what could mark a significant blow to the Sunni insurgency in its last urban stronghold.

Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said the arrest of Abu Ayyub al-Masri — also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — was reported by the Iraqi commander in Mosul, where insurgents have sought to establish a foothold after being widely uprooted from Baghdad and surrounding areas last year.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Bradford Leighton told Agence France-Presse the military was checking the report.

“We have no operational reports on that yet. We are checking into it,” he said.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the arrest occurred “at midnight and during the primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza al-Muhajir.”

“Now a broader investigation of him is being conducted,” he said.

According to Reuters news agency, a Defense Ministry spokesman said, “American forces have taken him to identify him.” Al-Masri assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike on June 7, 2006.

His apprehension would carry major symbolic value for Iraqi commanders, who have led operations in the Mosul area and have sought to counter concern that Iraqi forces lack the training and discipline to wage a head-on fight against insurgents.

However, there have been false alarms in the past about al-Masri. At least twice — in 2006 and May 2007 — reports circulated that al-Masri was dead, but they were later proved wrong.

Any direct links are murky between al-Masri’s insurgents and the terror network of Osama bin Laden. But al-Masri has followed a path that brought him in contact with some of bin Laden’s top lieutenants.

U.S. officials said al-Masri joined al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in the late 1990s and trained as a car-bomb expert before traveling to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Meanwhile, a rocket hit a downtown Baghdad park yesterday, killing two people as U.S. and Iraqi forces battled Shi’ite militants thought responsible for many such attacks.

The U.S. military said that 17 militants had been killed since Wednesday in clashes around Baghdad.

The rocket, which also wounded six people, was the second in three days to land in downtown parks apparently after failing to reach the U.S.-protected Green Zone, which includes the U.S. Embassy and key Iraqi government offices.

A rocket hit and destroyed some playground equipment in another park Tuesday.

A bomb exploded on a minibus yesterday in Baghdad’s eastern Zayona neighborhood, killing two passengers and injuring five, police said.

U.S. forces have increased air power and armored patrols in an attempt to cripple Shi’ite militia influence in Sadr City, a slum of 2.5 million people and the Baghdad base for the Mahdi Army led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Nine militants were killed in two U.S. missile attacks in the New Baghdad neighborhood early yesterday, the U.S. military said. U.S. soldiers killed one of two militants who were planting a roadside bomb in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah, the military said.