al-Zarqawi may have have been beaten to death by US forces following the air strike on his safe house, two British newspapers claimed on Sunday.
LONDON: The leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may have have been beaten to death by US forces following the air strike on his safe house, two British newspapers claimed on Sunday.
The Observer and the Sunday Times both carried reports on events leading up to his death, citing apparent eye-witnesses to the immediate aftermath of the attack near the city of Baquba on last Wednesday.
In a two-page report, The Observer said that although there was no corroboration of the claims that the badly-injured Zarqawi was beaten to death, revelations of revenge killings by US troops means it cannot be discounted.
It quoted one man as saying US soldiers pulled a man resembling Zarqawi from an ambulance where locals had placed him, wrapped his traditional Arab robe, the dishdasha, around his head and battered him severely till he died.
The Sunday Times went into more detail, citing 25-year-old labourer, Ali Abbas, as saying: "They (the US soldiers) were shouting and screaming and in a very tense and agitated mood".
He added: "The Americans tore his dishdasha and they kept on asking him through an interpreter, 'What is your name, what is your name?'."
The troops were said to have been worried that the man was wearing a suicide belt. Abbas said the soldiers kicked the wounded man in the chest until he grew paler and began bleeding from his mouth before he died.
He apparently recognised the dead man as Zarqawi after seeing pictures in newspapers the following day.
Both newspapers carried US military confirmation that Zarqawi was not dead after the initial air-strike and that he had tried to roll off the stretcher when he realised the soldiers' identity.
The Observer said Zarqawi was caught with the help of a man called Mohammed al-Karbouli, a Jordanian border guard who was arrested as part of a massive investigation into the triple suicide bombings on hotels in Amman last year.
Karbouli is alleged to have been a key figure in the cross-border transfer of weapons, money and material to Iraqi insurgents. He is said to have provided information that led to 17 addresses being identified as possible hideouts.
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