Iraq hails death of Zarqawi as start of new era

Baghdad, Jun 9: The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a ''new beginning'' for Iraq, the interior minister said today, but authorities imposed a traffic ban in an apparent effort to prevent al Qaeda reprisal attacks.

The ban in Baghdad and in the town of Baquba, near where US planes killed the most wanted man in Iraq on Wednesday, will last from 11 am (1230 hrs IST) until 3 pm, when Iraqis go to mosques for Friday prayers, the Interior Ministry said.

Suicide car bombers launched by Zarqawi have attacked Shi'ite mosques in the past as part of a campaign to plunge Iraq into sectarian civil war. The traffic ban suggested authorities feared more such attacks today.

Fugitive Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar vowed that the killing of Zarqawi would not weaken Muslim efforts against ''crusader forces'', a Pakistani report said.

In a strike that President George W Bush said could help to turn the tide against the insurgency, two US 500-pound (227 kg) bombs killed Zarqawi in a rural area near Baquba, 65 km north of Baghdad, on Wednesday.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told Iraqiya state television: ''Killing Zarqawi is a new beginning for Iraqi security and establishing peace between the different components of society.'' But US officials, struggling to defeat an insurgency that has sown mayhem in Iraq with car bombs, beheadings and kidnappings in the three years since the US invasion, have warned against expectations of an quick end to violence.

Hours after US and Iraqi officials announced the death of Zarqawi, a string of bombs in Baghdad yesterday killed at least 31 people and wounded scores.

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said the demise of Zarqawi would help improve oil production, crippled by violence.

But gunmen kidnapped a senior official of the oil ministry yesterday. Police and ministry sources said Muthana al-Badri, Director General of Iraq's State Company for Oil Projects, had been on his way home when gunmen stopped his car.

US military officials said the Jordanian-born Zarqawi was killed in a joint US-Iraqi operation. DNA samples from Zarqawi, who was identified with the help of fingerprints, are now at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia and tests are expected to be completed by Monday, CNN said today.

REUTERS