The number two man in al Qaeda in Iraq has been killed. Again.
The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq has been wounded and his top aide killed in a clash with police, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN Thursday. Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf said Iraqi police got into a firefight with insurgents on the road between Falluja, west of Baghdad, and Samarra, north of Baghdad, and wounded Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Abu Abdullah al-Majamiai, al-Masri’s top aide, was killed, he said. (Watch how an Iraqi minister described the firefight Video)
The group was trying to enter the town of Balad, Khalaf said. Khalaf said Iraqi police have the body of al-Majamiai.
CNN could not independently confirm the report and CNN’s Michael Ware in Baghdad said Iraqi officials would not say whether al-Masri was in custody. The U.S. military — who wrongly reported last October that al-Masri had been killed — referred reporters to the Iraqi government.
Al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, is an Egyptian who took over the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq in June after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The tactical and strategic result will likely be, as in the seemingly dozens of previous times we’ve killed a top leader of al Qaeda, virtually nil. Still, killing them has a moderate boost in morale and can’t be a bad thing, presuming it’s done without killing innocents or untoward damage to the infrastructure.
Presumably, there’s a finite supply of these people since, one would think, it would be difficult to be taken seriously in such a position prior to age twenty and, thus, it takes at least that long to grow one. Otherwise, though, it doesn’t take an inordinate amount of technical or tactical competence to murder hapless civilians in a marketplace.
UPDATE: Andrew Olmsted hopes this “indicates that the Iraqi police are improving in their ability to take on the insurgency.” Spook86 argues that Task Force 145 is closing in al Qaeda more generally.
