Update: Officials Probing Whether Raid in Mosul Killed Zarqawi--again...

Officials Probing Whether Raid in Mosul Killed Zarqawi*

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 21, 2005; A11

BAGHDAD, Nov. 20 -- An Iraqi police commander said Sunday that U.S. and
Iraqi officials were certain that seven men who fought to the death in a
house in northern Iraq were members of al Qaeda but were still trying to
determine whether one of them was Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian
insurgent leader.

U.S. and Iraqi forces remained deployed around the site of the
three-hour gunfight Saturday at a house in the city of Mosul, north of
Baghdad. Children stayed home from class on Sunday, a school day in the
Islamic world, and other residents kept off the streets, presumably
fearing that more fighting might result from the heavy military presence
in the city.

Joint forces backed by U.S. military helicopters had surrounded the
house after receiving a tip that led them to believe that Zarqawi might
be inside, the governor of Nineveh province, Duraid Kashmoula, said
Saturday.

As Iraqi soldiers and U.S. Special Forces advisers went into the
building, grenades rained down from the roof, wounding 11 of them,
according to a U.S. Army officer near where the raid occurred. Multiple
explosions collapsed the building, and two American Special Forces
troops were killed, he said.

Kashmoula said four of the fighters inside died while resisting the
assault, and three others blew themselves up with explosives rather than
be captured. A woman was also found inside with the words "suicide
bomber" marked on her chest, officials said. Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed
Jubouri, a police commander in Mosul, said the force of the suicide
blasts destroyed the house.

Zarqawi is the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, a group allied with the
larger al Qaeda organization and that is believed responsible for many
suicide attacks in Iraq.

Kashmoula said U.S. officials retrieved the remains and were
investigating whether Zarqawi was among the dead.

U.S. military officials believe it is possible that Zarqawi was killed
in the raid but will not know with certainty until DNA tests are run,
said a U.S. military intelligence official involved in Iraqi issues.

There is a "30 percent" chance that one of the bodies is Zarqawi's, he
said. But he warned: "We've had dry holes before."

Over the past month, the official said, there has been a series of raids
following a surge in tips from Iraqis unhappy with Zarqawi and his
operation. These tend to be traditional Iraqi leaders -- sheiks and
imams -- upset with the organization, especially its recent execution of
Sunni Arabs in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar. "Their feeling
is that al Qaeda in Iraq has overstepped its bounds," he said.

Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire Sunday near the
capital. The soldier was assigned to the Army's Task Force Baghdad. A
Marine, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, died
of wounds suffered the day before in Karmah, near a village outside
Fallujah, the military reported.

In the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed a British soldier,
the British Ministry of Defense said.