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Militant site says zarqawi wounded { May 25 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/11732505.htmhttp://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/11732505.htm
Posted on Wed, May. 25, 2005
Militant site says Zarqawi wounded
AL-QAIDA'S IRAQ LEADER MAY HAVE SOUGHT HOSPITAL CARE
By John F. Burns and Richard A. Oppel Jr.
New York Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A statement posted on the Internet in the name of his Islamist militant group said Tuesday that America's most-wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been injured ``for the sake of God,'' a term commonly used by militants in Iraq to refer to wounds sustained at the hands of U.S. or Iraqi troops.
The statement gave no details of the injury or how it was inflicted, but it appealed to all Muslims to pray for the ``speedy recovery'' of Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for scores of suicide bombings, ambushes, drive-by assassinations and hostage killings, and attracted a U.S. bounty of $25 million. Last week, a statement issued in his name on the same Web site justified the killing of Iraqi civilians in the course of insurgent attacks, saying it was ``necessary if you must kill them to get at the enemy.''
The authenticity of the Web posting could not confirmed.
The claim that Zarqawi was injured followed a series of unconfirmed reports that the Jordanian-born militant, named by Osama bin Laden as Al-Qaida's chief representative in Iraq, sought hospital treatment in the past month in at least two cities in the desert of western Iraq. On May 16, Iraqi and U.S. forces mounted a nighttime cordon around the Karkh hospital in central Baghdad after a tip that Zarqawi had gone there for treatment, but found no trace of him.
For weeks, U.S. commanders in Iraq have said they believed they were closing in on Zarqawi, and have cited the arrest of more than 20 of his ``trusted lieutenants,'' including leaders of his terrorist cells, propaganda chiefs, bomb makers, drivers and others. But a U.S. general in Iraq who was reached by telephone Tuesday took a cautious view of the report that the militant leader had been injured, saying that while the U.S. command did not discount the report, ``we aren't banking on it, either.''
``It could be a ruse to throw us off his trail,'' the officer said.
Some who studied the Web posting said they believed it to be authentic. One of the first reports of the posting came from a Washington-based monitoring organization, the SITE Institute, which scrutinizes Internet postings by Islamist terrorist groups, and offers subscribers English translations of the Arabic texts. Its director, Rita Katz, said in a telephone interview that the statement claiming Zarqawi had been injured appeared first on an Internet message board that has been used regularly for pronouncements by Zarqawi's group, Al-Qaida in Iraq.
``I believe this is a very authentic message,'' Katz said. ``I really believe this came from Al-Qaida in Iraq.''
Zarqawi, who is in his mid-30s, was first reported to be in Iraq during the last years of Saddam Hussein's rule, when Western intelligence reports said he had fled Jordan for refuge with an Al-Qaida-linked Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, that operated in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, along the Iranian border. After the U.S.-led invasion two years ago, he became the leader of the Islamists, many of them from other Arab countries, who joined hard-line remnants of Saddam's government in mounting the insurgency.
The U.S. command, and Zarqawi's own Web site pronouncements, have depicted him as moving undetected between the main centers of violence, in Baghdad, Al-Fallujah, Ar-Ramadi, Mosul and elsewhere. Since the U.S.-led offensive that recaptured Al-Fallujah in November, which killed scores of militants and scattered others, U.S. commanders have made the destruction of his network a priority.
Zarqawi reportedly has had several narrow escapes. Earlier this month, U.S. officers said he had come close to being captured during a U.S. raid along the Euphrates River north of Ar-Ramadi on Feb. 20. The commanders said a pickup carrying Zarqawi made an abrupt U-turn near a U.S. checkpoint, 100 miles east of the Syrian border. The officers said Zarqawi leaped from the pickup and hid beneath an overpass, leaving his driver and another man to be captured, along with Zarqawi's laptop computer and more than $100,000 in cash.
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