Just rebels, we didn’t get Ibrahim: US

The US Military denied reports that Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, the most wanted man in Iraq after Saddam Hussein and alleged mastermind of guerr...

The US Military denied reports that Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, the most wanted man in Iraq after Saddam Hussein and alleged mastermind of guerrilla resistance, had been captured in a raid on Tuesday. It said 27 suspected guerrillas were caught when about 1,000 soldiers stormed the town of Hawija near Kirkuk before dawn, but the man with a $10 million price on his head wasn’t one of them.

‘‘He was definitely not captured in today’s mission,’’ Major Doug Vincent told reporters who accompanied troops on the raid that aimed to find suspects behind guerrilla attacks on US Forces in the ‘‘Sunni triangle’’ region of fiercest resistance.

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Earlier, sources in Iraq’s Governing Council had said Ibrahim had been either seized or killed.

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The raid came as Spain mourned seven intelligence officers killed near Baghdad but the government vowed to stay the course in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb near the town of Samarra on Tuesday, the 189th to die in fighting since President George W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1.

Earlier during the Hawija raid, Kirkuk’s police chief had not given up hope that Ibrahim had been traced. ‘‘The possibility we have Izzat Ibrahim is more than 80 per cent, but I can’t say for sure whether he has been killed or captured yet,’’ Torhan Abulrahman said.

He said US Forces and Iraqi police had mounted the joint sweep after information from one of Ibrahim’s wives, captured earlier this month, suggested he was in the area.

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Ibrahim’s detention would have been a major coup for the US-led coalition. A veteran ally of Saddam, he is sixth on the US list of top Iraqi fugitives. The US Military said last month he was directly involved in attacks on US Troops and put the bounty on his head. A reward of $25 million is still on offer for information leading to the capture or death of Saddam.

Hawija, a cold, muddy town of mainly Sunni Arabs, was full of anti-US and pro-Saddam graffiti and posters, with slogans like ‘‘Saddam is the pride of the Arabs’’, ‘‘Death to the agents’’, and ‘‘Don’t be armour for the Americans’’.

The occupying forces have suffered relentless guerrilla attacks but Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a staunch ally of Bush despite the war’s unpopularity at home, ruled out taking his forces home.

‘‘Withdrawal can never be an option in the face of terror. If we withdrew, all the efforts we have made until now would have been in vain. It would strengthen the power and strategy of the terrorists. It would be giving in to their blackmail,’’ Aznar told Parliament just hours after a state funeral for the dead agents. (Reuters)

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