Qaeda leader in Iraq wounded: Interior Ministry

Baghdad, Feb 16: The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was wounded by Iraqi security forces in a clash north of Baghdad, two Interior Ministry sources said today.

A ministry spokesman quoted in a report by Iraq's state-run television Iraqiya and monitored by the BBC indicated that Masri had escaped the gunbattle yesterday after being hurt.

But the two sources who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity declined to give details on Masri's whereabouts or say how security forces knew he had been wounded.

They said a Masri aide had been killed in the clash, which one source said occurred when a group of al Qaeda militants were intercepted by Iraqi police while on their way to the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

The US military in Baghdad said they were unable to confirm the reports.

Militants destroyed a holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra a year ago, an act that unleashed an upsurge in sectarian bloodletting that has since driven Iraq closer to all-out civil war.

Masri, an Egyptian, assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006.

Masri is also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. The US military has described him as a close Zarqawi associate who trained in Afghanistan and formed al Qaeda's first cell in Baghdad. The United States has put a 5 million dollars bounty on Masri's head.

REUTERS