Pat Dollard | Young Americans

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military on Tuesday said it had killed or captured 40 senior Al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders last month, as a shadowy head of the jihadi group announced a new bombing campaign in the war-torn country.

US military spokesman Major General Kevin Bergner said Abu Maysara, a close aide of Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was among those killed.

“He was one of the 40 Al-Qaeda leaders killed or captured in November,” Bergner told reporters, breaking the figures down into nine militants killed and 31 captured.

They included emirs, leaders of bomb-making cells, trainers and facilitators of terrorists, funders and propagandists, Bergner said.

He said Maysara, a Syrian and also known as Abu Basha’ir, was killed in a raid in the central town of Samarra on November 17.

“Abu Maysara was positively identified using DNA evidence,” Bergner said. “He was a member of Abu Ayyub al-Masri’s inner circle and served as a senior adviser.”

A US military statement, which gave further details of the leader, said he was responsible for “providing extremist spiritual guidance and rebuttal on terrorist matters, perverting Islamic faith to terrorism, murder and torture.”

Abu Maysara and five others were killed in a firefight with US forces as they surrounded a house near Samarra used to disseminate propaganda, in an operation against Al-Qaeda in Iraq media networks, Bergner said.

It was later found that three of the slain militants had been wearing explosive vets, one of which detonated during the operation which also involved an air strike on a building.

Bergner warned that despite the successes, Al-Qaeda in Iraq remained a potent force in Iraq.

“There is no question that Al-Qaeda in Iraq remains a dangerous and vicious threat,” Bergner said.

“They are a continuing threat and we will have to fight very hard against them. This will be a difficult fight. It won’t be like turning on a light bulb where you go from dark to light.”

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a shawdowy self-proclaimed leader of an Al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq, meanwhile, has warned of renewed attacks in the country, the SITE Intelligence Group said on Tuesday.

Baghdadi, leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, said in an Internet audio message a new brigade called Al-Siddiq Brigades had been formed to fight every “apostate and traitor,” the SITE said.

Baghdadi warned of an attack that “will end on the 20th day of Muharram 1429 in the (Islamic) Hijri calendar, corresponding to January 29, 2008,” it said.
“This attack involves bombings aimed at the ‘apostates’ and members of the Awakening Councils” grouping Sunni tribes that have joined the fight against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, it added.

The term apostates is usually used to refer to Iraqi security forces.

The US military claims there is nobody called Baghdadi in the Islamic State of Iraq, and that it is merely an Internet-based organisation.
“We have spoken before about this fictional character known as Baghdadi,” said Bergner.

“The whole notion behind this character is to try to put an Iraqi face to an Al-Qaeda organisation. It is essentially a virtual organisation.”
A suicide bomber, meanwhile, blew himself up at the gate of a police station at Jawalaa, near the city of Baquba northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least six people, including five security personnel, police said.

Three Kurdish security guards, two policemen and a civilian were killed and 25 others were wounded.

The US military said Tuesday that American forces opened fire on a private vehicle during an operation against Al-Qaeda near Tarmiyah north of Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding three others.

The incident on Monday came a week after nine civilians, including three women and a child, were reported killed by US fire on vehicles in three separate incidents.

The military said in a statement troops opened fire after the vehicle failed to stop despite warning shots being fired.