(CBS/AP) 
It was portrayed by U.S. military chiefs as a precision cloak-and-dagger job. Al-Zarqawi was pinpointed by tracking the movements of his spiritual adviser to a safe house outside Baqouba. Then U.S. officials called in two patrolling F-16 fighters to drop a pair of 500-pound bombs that flattened the building, killing al-Zarqawi, adviser Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, and four others, including a woman and a child.

Intelligence officials had identified al-Iraqi several weeks earlier with help from "somebody inside the al-Zarqawi network," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said.

Adding an ironic touch was the place where al-Zarqawi met his end: a village named Hibhib that produces anise-flavored arak, one of the most popular alcoholic drinks in the Middle East.

"Through a painstaking intelligence effort, we were able to start tracking him, monitor his movements and establish when he was doing his link-up with al-Zarqawi," he said.

In the final two weeks of the manhunt for al-Zarqawi, Caldwell indicated U.S. and Iraqi forces had pinpointed the location of many other key al-Qaida figures but had held off on attacking them for fear of spooking their boss. Immediately after al-Zarqawi was killed, U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out 17 raids in the Baghdad region, he said.

"I think it has done significant damage to al Qaeda in Iraq in particular because this man was the architect, the mastermind of the movement here, but still the organization is able to do harm and I anticipate that they will demonstrate that they are still able to do damage and expect them to express themselves in the coming hours and days," U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told Schieffer of al-Zarqawi's death.

While leaders in Iraq said the killing was a major victory, Iraqi citizens had mixed reactions.

"If it's true al-Zarqawi was killed, that will be a big happiness for all the Iraqis," said college student Thamir Abdulhussein. "He was behind all the killings of Sunni and Shiites. Iraqis should now move toward reconciliation. They should stop the violence."

Amir Muhammed Ali, a 45-year-old stockbroker in Baghdad, was skeptical that al-Zarqawi's death would end the unrelenting violence in the country.

"He didn't represent the resistance, someone will replace him and the operations will go on," he said.

In the past year, al-Zarqawi moved his campaign beyond Iraq's borders, claiming to have carried out a Nov. 9, 2005, triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60 people, and even a rocket attack from Lebanon into northern Israel.

The U.S. military said an Egyptian-born man he identified as Abu al-Masri will probably take over al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Masri trained in Afghanistan and probably came to Iraq in 2002, probably helping to establish the first al-Qaeda cell in Baghdad.

Since his emergence following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, al-Zarqawi had become Iraq's most wanted militant, as notorious as Osama bin Laden, to whom he swore allegiance in 2004. The United States put a $25 million bounty on al-Zarqawi, the same as bin Laden.

©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Back To Top