Top Al-Qaeda planner slain

BAGHDAD: US forces have killed an Al-Qaeda militant who planned some of the biggest bombings in Baghdad and who killed a group of Russian diplomats in 2006, the military said on Saturday.

Mahir Ahmad Mahmud al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami, was killed along with an unnamed woman in Baghdad’s Sunni district of Adhamiyah on Friday, a statement said.

The military said Abu Rami’s group was responsible for suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad. In one incident, a man blew himself in the Jadida neighbourhood and killed 12 people. And a suicide car bomb on the same day in the Zafaraniyah neighbourhood killed eight people. Abu Rami was reportedly also responsible for multiple car bombings and mortar attacks in Sadr City in 2006 and 2007, including the car bombings on November 23, 2006 that killed more than 200 people.