BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces have captured four senior Al-Qaeda militants in an early morning ambush north of the capital, including one of the group’s top military commanders, defense authorities said Wednesday.
Local Sunni Islamist Al-Qaeda affiliates are still blamed for much of the violence in Iraq with the insurgency seeking to destabilize the country as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw by the end of the year.
“It was an ambush during which they were captured after we acted on detailed information. We were following them,” said Mohammad al-Askari, the Defense Ministry spokesman.
The four men included Mikhlif Mohammad Hussein al-Azzawi, known as Abu Radhwan, suspected of leading the local group’s military operations, and Qassim Mohammad Taher, accused of orchestrating a March attack on a provincial building that killed more than 50 people. They were arrested in the city of Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad, Askari said.
Iraqi officials say Al-Qaeda has been severely weakened, and its two top commanders were killed in April last year. But dozens of bombings, assassinations and attacks are still carried out each month.
Iraqi security officials have been on high alert for revenge attacks by local Al-Qaeda fighters since the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden earlier this month.
Iraqi Shiite militias are also blamed for a wave of attacks on police and army officers in an attempt to block what some Shiite leaders fear could be a return of Saddam’s outlawed Sunni Baath Party after the U.S. withdrawal.
Also Wednesday, Iraqi officials said that a bomb in Baghdad killed an Iraqi man and injured three other people.
A Baghdad policeman said the casualties were the result of a so-called sticky bomb hidden on the underside of a car. Police did not immediately know the motive for the attack. A hospital official confirmed that the driver was killed while his two passengers and a passer-by were wounded.