No. 2 al-Qaida in Iraq official killed

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. and Iraqi authorities said Tuesday their forces had killed the No. 2 official in the al-Qaida in Iraq organization in a weekend raid in Baghdad, claiming to have struck a "painful blow" to the country's most feared insurgent group.

Abdullah Abu Azzam led al-Qaida's operations in Baghdad, planning a brutal wave of suicide bombings in the capital since April, killing hundreds of people -- including police, army recruits and day laborers, officials said.

He also controlled the finances for foreign fighters that flowed into Iraq to join the insurgency.

Abu Azzam, who a government spokesman said was an Iraqi, was the top deputy to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Abu Azzam was on a list of Iraq's 29 most-wanted insurgents issued by the U.S. military in February and had a bounty of $50,000 on his head.

Al-Qaida in Iraq denied that Abu Azzam was the No. 2 leader of the organization and said "it was not confirmed" that he was killed. "Abu Azzam was one of al-Qaida's many soldiers and is the leader of one of its battalions operating in Baghdad," the group said in an Internet statement by its spokesman, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi.

It called the U.S. and Iraqi claims that he was the group's top deputy "a futile attempt ... to raise the morale of their troops."

It was not immediately clear what effect Abu Azzam's death would have on al-Qaida in Iraq, which has been one of the deadliest militant groups, carrying out suicide attacks that targeted the country's Shiite majority. The U.S. military has claimed to have killed or captured leading al-Zarqawi aides in the past and attacks have continued unabated -- although Abu Azzam appeared to be a more significant figure.

Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba called the killing of Abu Azzam a "painful blow" to al-Qaida, but warned that the group would likely carry out revenge attacks.

Abu Azzam was killed early Sunday when U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a high-rise apartment building in Baghdad, Lt. said Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman.

"They went in to capture him, he did not surrender, and he was killed in the raid," Boylan said.

The Iraqi and U.S. forces targeted the building after a tip from an Iraqi citizen, Kubba said. During the raid, the troops captured another militant in the apartment with Abu Azzam, Kubba said.

Abu Azzam -- whose real name is Abdullah Najim Abdullah Mohamed Al-Jawari -- was the No. 2 figure in al-Qaida in Iraq, Kubba and Boylan said.

He had claimed responsibility for the assassinations of a number of top politicians, including a car bomb in May 2004 that killed Izzadine Saleem, the president of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, and a July 2004 attack that killed the governor of Nineveh province, the military said.

He was the group's "amir" or leader in Anbar, the vast western province that is the heartland of the insurgency, until spring, when he became the amir in Baghdad and led operations in and around the capital. He was "responsible for the recent upsurge in violent attacks in the city since April 2005," the military said.

"We continue to decimate the leadership of the al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorist network and continue to disrupt their operations," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman. "By taking Abu Azzam off the street, another close associate of Zarqawi, we have dealt another serious blow to al-Zarqawi's terrorist organization."

Abu Azzam "personally planned and ordered suicide car bomb attacks" in Baghdad and was responsible for financing for the group and its "international communications," Kubba said.

Abu Azzam's death was followed by two other successes against al-Qaida in Iraq's leadership, officials said -- the group's leader in the northern city of Mosul surrendered to the Iraqi military, and its leader in the town of Karabila in the sensitive region near the Syrian border was killed.

The Karabila leader, identified only as Abu Nasser, died along with several others Monday in a raid on the group's headquarters in the city, Kubba told a news conference, without elaborating. Gen. Wafiq al-Samaraei, the Iraqi president's national security adviser, said Abu Nasser was killed in a U.S. airstrike. The U.S. military confirmed an airstrike in the region Monday, but gave no details on casualties.

The area near the Syrian border is key to the infiltration of foreign fighters joining Iraq's insurgency. Kubba acknowledged that "foreigners move freely" in the region.

The Baqouba suicide bomber slipped into a building where the Iraqis were applying to join Iraq's Quick Reaction Police Force, said a commander who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about his security.

Nine Iraqis were killed and 21 wounded in the blast, said Adhid Mita'ab, an official at Baqouba General Hospital.

The attack, along with the news of the Marine's death, raised to at least 62 the number of people killed in the past three days in Iraq, less than a month before a national referendum on Iraq's draft constitution.

In Baghdad, visiting NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer opened a long-awaited training academy for Iraqi military officers.

"This center makes and marks a significant step toward a more secure Iraq," de Hoop Scheffer said after hoisting a NATO flag over the center. "NATO is here to help the Iraqi government to develop the tools it needs."

NATO's role in Iraq has been limited to training Iraqi forces and supplying equipment, due to opposition for a wider role led by France and Germany.