BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed the top two leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq and detained a large number of their followers, officials said Monday, in what appears to be a major strike against the persistent extremist group blamed for a string of recent bombings that have destabilized the nation.
Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, called the deaths “potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency.”
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is fighting to hold on to his post in a new government after last month’s disputed election, appeared on television to trumpet the killings, calling them a “triumph” for the Iraqi security forces that “broke the back of al-Qaeda.”
The two al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders, Abu Hamza Muhajir and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, were killed Sunday in an Iraqi-led raid supported by U.S. forces on an al-Qaeda hide-out in a remote corner of Anbar province, southwest of Tikrit, the birthplace of the late dictator Saddam Hussein, officials said.
A U.S. soldier was killed in the assault when a helicopter crashed, a U.S. military statement said.
Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was an Egyptian who was anointed by Osama bin Laden to head al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2006 killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Trained in Afghanistan, Muhajir was considered a top international al-Qaeda operative whose expertise was behind many of the bloodiest bombings in Baghdad and who had been hunted by the U.S. since 2004.
Less is known about Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the nom de guerre of the Iraqi who headed the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization formed by al-Qaeda in 2006 to give the organization a more Iraqi identity. The military gave his real name as Hamid Dawud Mohammed Khalil al-Zawi, although in the past officials had said they thought Baghdadi was a fictional character.
A U.S. intelligence official said the deaths did not mean al-Qaeda in Iraq would fall apart, noting it survived the killing of al-Zarqawi, its founder, in a U.S. airstrike in 2006. The latest killings “were a setback to the organization, but other people will most likely step up,” the official said.
Much will depend on whether al-Qaeda in Iraq is able to regroup, and how quickly. After al-Zarqawi’s killing, the group quickly revived under Muhajir, striking even more forcefully with a series of car bombs in Baghdad that helped sustain the raging sectarian violence.
Iraq has changed much since then; most Sunnis have turned their backs on extremism and joined the political process. Iraq’s security forces, now numbering at least 700,000, are far stronger. The remoteness of the place where the safehouse was located, deep in the desert and across a large lake from the nearest town, suggests al-Qaeda in Iraq operatives can no longer find refuge in populated areas.
The larger al-Qaeda network also has shifted its attention away from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as U.S. troops build up in that region. It is unclear whether the organization would be prepared to assign a top leader to Iraq at this stage, said Brett McGurk, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the lead negotiator for the security agreement between Iraq and the U.S.
“In Iraq, we never know the strategic impact for a couple of months out,” McGurk said. “Is there an al-Masri deputy waiting in the wings?”
