Saturday, March 10, 2007

Top al-Qaida official taken in Iraq raid (but not the Butcher as originally reported)

BAGHDAD - Iraqi officials said Saturday they had arrested a top al-Qaida official, but that he was not the terror mastermind Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, as they had identified him a day earlier.

"After preliminary investigations, it was proven that the arrested al-Qaida person is not Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, but, in fact, another important al-Qaida official," said Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Mousawi, an Iraqi military spokesman. "Interrogations and investigations are still under way to get more information."

Al-Mousawi declined to give the suspect's name on Saturday.

Also Saturday, a suicide car bomb struck Baghdad's Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City, killing at least 10 people, police said. The bomb hit an Iraqi patrol and scattered burning debris for hundreds yards, witnesses said.

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