Tests To Clarify If Zarqawi Died
Iraqis Say DNA Tests Underway; U.S. Doubts Terror Leader Was Killed
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Play CBS Video Video Al-Zarqawi Still At Large? There was brief speculation on the part of U.S. officials that top terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among those killed during a weekend raid in Mosul, Iraq. Kimberly Dozier reports.
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Video Al-Zarqawi Thought To Be Alive Web Exclusive: CBS News' Kimberly Dozier reports from Iraq on a U.S. raid on a house holding eight suspected al Qaeda members, one of whom was briefly thought to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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Video Is Zarqawi Dead Or Alive? National Security correspondent David Martin responds to the news that the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a shootout with U.S. troops.
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The White House says it is "highly unlikely" that the terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead in a weekend battle in Mosul, Iraq. (CBS)
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A man flanked by two Iraqi soldiers mourns the death of a relative who died after a car bomb, which was targeting U.S. Humvees, exploded in the town of Kanan, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 21, 2005. (AP)
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A man is carried to a local hospital, in Baqouba, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 21, 2005, after a car bomb targeting U.S. Humvees exploded in the town of Kanan, killing five civilians and wounding 12 bystanders. (AP)
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An Iraqi policeman stands in front of the wreckage of a car bomb which exploded in central Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 19. (AP)
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Photo Essay Double Car Bombs A pair of car blasts were only part of new violence in Iraq Friday that left at least 70 dead.
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Interactive American Heroes Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.
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Interactive Attacks Map Details on the insurgency and terrorism that has continued to take lives since the fall of Saddam.
"Unfortunately, we did not get him in Mosul," Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.
A U.S. government official, who spoke in Washington on condition of anonymity, confirmed that DNA from the eight insurgents who died in the Saturday raid in Mosul had been taken for testing.
Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers fired Monday on a civilian vehicle they feared might hold a suicide bomber, killing at least two adults and a child, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
Dr. Ahmed Fouad of the city morgue and police officials gave a higher death toll, saying five people driving home from a relative's funeral had been killed, including three children.
"It was one of these regrettable, tragic incidents and it wouldn't happen if Zarqawi (followers) weren't driving" car bombs, said Maj. Steven Warren, a U.S. spokesman, referring to Iraq's most wanted man. Warren said a soldier who thought the vehicle was moving erratically had fired warning shots beforehand.
In related developments:
Iraqi officials have long complained about American troops firing at civilian vehicles that fail to approach checkpoints carefully or otherwise appear suspicious. U.S. officials point to the heavy toll of suicide car bombers who often strike U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints.
The shooting near the U.S. base took place in a province that has experienced at least four major bombings in the last three weeks including a suicide car bomb Monday that missed U.S. vehicles but killed five civilians and wounded 12 others in the town of Kanan outside Baqouba.
Meanwhile, mystery continued to surround a deadly firefight that broke out when U.S. and Iraqi forces surrounded a Mosul house believed used by members of the country's most feared terror group, al Qaeda in Iraq. Eight insurgents and four Iraqi policemen died in the assault, officials said.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that once the Mosul house was surrounded, insurgents blew themselves up, filling the house with body parts and charred flesh. U.S. troops have taken the flesh and blood samples to complete DNA tests to identify who was killed in the building (video).
The raid took place in a mostly Kurdish area of eastern Mosul where attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces are fewer than in the western, mostly Sunni Arab part of the city. However, U.S. soldiers say many insurgents live on the eastern side, labeling them "commuter terrorists" who would launch attacks in the west during the day and return to their homes in the east at night.
Shahwan Fadhl Ali, who lives near the scene, said eight Arabs four men, a woman and three childred had been living quietly there since last year. "They might have been Syrians or Jordanians but not Iraqis," he said.
On Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the two-story house. In Moscow, visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hohshyar Zebari told Jordan's official Petra news agency that authorities were testing DNA samples from several corpses to determine if al-Zarqawi was among them.
But U.S. officials avoided linking al-Zarqawi to the Mosul raid and sought to dispel speculation that the terror mastermind, behind many of the suicide bombings and kidnappings and beheading of U.S. and other hostages, was dead.
"I don't believe that we got him. Of course, his days are numbered, we are after him, we are getting ever closer," Khalilzad said on a visit south of Baghdad. "Unfortunately, we did not get him in Mosul."
At the Pentagon, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Venable said U.S. forces routinely "employ whatever means required to identify suspected or known terrorists or insurgents."
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