Zarqawi's Death 'Unlikely'
U.S. forces left a cordoned area around a house in the northern city of Mosul on Monday where eight suspected al Qaeda members died in a gunfight over the weekend. The White House said it was "highly unlikely" that terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.
North of the capital, U.S. forces mistakenly fired on a civilian vehicle outside an American military base in Baqouba, killing at least three people, including one child, said Maj. Steven Warren, a U.S. spokesman.
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 Warren, referring to Iraq's most wanted man. Warren said a soldier who thought the vehicle was moving erratically had fired warning shots beforehand.
The U.S. military said the disputed death count may have been a result of a car bomb that targeted U.S. humvees in the same area, killing five civilians and wounding 12 bystanders in the town of Kanan outside of Baqouba. The blast was the latest in a series of attacks that have killed over 150 people over the last four days.
In the nearby city of Tarmiyah, four policemen were killed and another wounded by gunmen, police 1st Lt. Ali Hussein said.
Gunmen also killed a Sunni cleric, Khalil Ibrahim, outside his home in the largely Shiite southern city of Basra, police Capt. Mushtaq Talib said. Ibrahim was a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of influential Sunni clerics that has been sharply critical of the Shiite-led government.
In other developments:
During the intense gunbattle with suspected al Qaeda members in Mosul on Saturday, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were also wounded, the U.S. military 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 house.
However, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said Sunday that reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible." Eyewitnesses in Mosul said the U.S. military, which had cordoned off the area around the two-story house, left the area early on Monday.
"I don't think we got him," said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to questions from reporters about whether al-Zarqawi had been killed in Mosul. Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said there was "no indication" that the terror leader had been killed and said search operations continued.
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports there is no hard forensic evidence to confirm al-Zaraqwi's death. The claim has been made on Web sites out of the Middle East, but those sites have been wrong before, he says.
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
The elusive al-Zarqawi has narrowly escaped capture in the past. U.S. forces said they nearly caught him in a February 2005 raid that recovered his computer.
In Baghdad, three people, including one police officer, were killed Monday by gunmen, police said. Another body with was found in a southern district of the capital with a note saying the man had been killed by insurgents, morgue officials said.
Over the weekend an American soldier near the capital and a Marine in the western town of Karmah were killed in separate insurgent attacks, the military said. A British soldier was also killed Sunday and four others wounded by a roadside bomb in Basra.
The U.S. military also said Sunday that 24 people — including another Marine and 15 civilians — were killed the day before in an ambush on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Haditha, west of Baghdad in the volatile Euphrates River valley.
The three American deaths brought to at least 2,094 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In Cairo, Egypt, Iraq's president said Sunday he was ready for talks with anti-government opposition figures and members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and he called on the Sunni-led insurgency to lay down its arms and join the political process.
But President Jalal Talabani, attending an Arab League-sponsored reconciliation conference, insisted that the Iraqi government would not meet with Baath Party members who are participating in the Sunni-led insurgency.
"I want to listen to all Iraqis. I am committed to listen to them, even those who are criminals and are on trial," Talabani told reporters, but adding that he would only talk with insurgents if they put down their weapons.