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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Zarqawi Arrest Denied |
| 2004-10-16 |
| Officials denied a report that Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been captured in Fallujah. A Reuters witness said tanks could be seen moving on a highway just outside Falluja and were shelling suspected guerrilla positions. Hospital officials in the city said three peope were killed by the U.S. air strikes. Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government has said it will launch a major offensive in Falluja unless the city hands over Zarqawi and his militant followers. The U.S. military denied reports by Kuwait's official news agency KUNA on Saturday that Zarqawi and nine other militants had been captured by U.S. forces during raids on homes in Falluja on Friday. "We have heard those reports and we do not believe they are true," Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told Reuters. "We have been in contact with the marines based around Falluja and we have heard nothing about those reports through our channels." Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group claimed responsibility for Thursday's suicide bombings that killed up to four Americans in the heart of Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, seat of the government and home to the U.S. and British embassies. In another challenge for the U.S.-backed interim government, a group led by Zarqawi vowed to attack foreign trucks bringing petrol and diesel into Iraq. A Tawhid and Jihad pamphlet, shown to Reuters by an Oil Ministry official, said non-Iraqi trucks bringing in imported petrol and diesel would be "subject to destruction." Residents said U.S. forces bombarded western Falluja, destroying a house and killing a baby girl on Saturday. Reuters television footage showed the dead infant in hospital with its arm blown off. Three other children and a woman were injured. |
| Posted by:Fred |