Top aide of Qaeda leader in Iraq killed

BAGHDAD: A Libyan who was a top aide of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been killed in an operation by Iraqi security forces, an interior ministry spokesman said on Thursday.         

Abu Jaafar al-Lybi was killed on Sunday, said Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf.  

He said Lybi was the head of "Al-Qaeda's criminal operations" in Baghdad's Rusafa, Karrada districts and the restive province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad.           

Khalaf said two more associates of Lybi were arrested during the operation and are "under investigation."            

"During the operation, the forces found letters written by Lybi to Osama bin Laden and to Masri explaining his work and achievements in Iraq," Khalaf said.          

On Sunday Khalaf had said that Iraqi security forces killed three Al-Qaeda operatives in a morning raid on a house in western Baghdad's Karrada district.        

He said the three belonged to a terror cell headed by Lybi but that the militant was not among those killed.           

"We did not announce his death that day in order to continue our investigation," Khalaf said on Thursday.             

A large quantity of explosives and a number of suicide vests were found at the site of the raid on Sunday.             

Masri took over as the chief of Al-Qaeda's operations in Iraq after the slaying of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air strike on June 7 near the city of Baquba, the capital of Diyala province.