Post Wire Services
May 10, 2008
BAGHDAD - The military yesterday said the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq is still being hunted - contradicting earlier Iraqi claims that Abu Ayyub al-Masri had been captured.
Masri's detention would have been another blow for al Qaeda in Iraq, following a wave of US military assaults in and near Baghdad.
Iraqi security sources had already begun to cast doubt on the earlier announcement that Masri - an Egyptian with a US bounty of $5 million on his head - was picked up in an operation in Mosul Wednesday.
A senior Iraqi security source there said the man in question was an Iraqi.
Masri "has not been detained," said a senior US military official who offered no further details.
This isn't the first time there has been confusion over Masri's fate. Iraq's Interior Ministry said a year ago that he'd been killed, but al Qaeda in Iraq released an audio tape purportedly from him shortly after that.
The hated terrorist group was headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until he was killed in a US airstrike in June 2006. Masri was a close associate of Zarqawi.
