June 08, 2006

Al-Zarqawi: Dead/"Terminated"

The AP reports Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will announce Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. NBC News reports the U.S. military confirmed it.

This is great, amazing, wonderful news. Big, big news. It shows progress is being made in Iraq. It is a signal that U.S.-Iraqi forces are relentless is hunting down the Islamists who want Iraq's government to fall a quickly as it rose.

Iraqi troops should march al-Zarqawi's body through the streets of Baghdad and allow people to smack it with their shoes or whatever insult is most appropriate in their culture. That evil man forced Iraq to endure so much suffering.

"Report: U.S. Forces Kill al-Qaeda Leader al-Zarqawi"

UPDATE: The AP reports al-Zarqawi was killed in an air strike.

The London Telegraph reports:

It was reported that Zarqawi was killed in the city of Baquba at 7.00 pm local time, in a joint operation involving Jordanian intelligence, US intelligence and American special operations forces.

"Today Zarqawi has been terminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a televised news conference also attended by General George Casey, the highest-ranking American commander in Iraq, and other senior officials.

The Guardian reports:

Mr Maliki said the air strike was the result of US forces acting on information provided to Iraqi security forces by local residents.

CNN has remarks from Gen. George Casey:

Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates who were conducting a meeting approximately eight kilometers north of Baquba when the airstrike was launched.

Baquba is a volatile area northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, a mixed Shiite-Sunni jurisdiction. There have been many roadside bombings and shootings throughout the province and within the week, severed heads were found in fruit boxes there.

Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike, and elements of Multi-National Division North, arrived shortly thereafter. We have been able to identify al-Zarqawi by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars.

Oil futures have gone down on the good news.

UPDATE II: Omar at Iraq the Model: "CONGRATULATIONS TO IRAQ, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WHOLE WORLD ON THIS VICTORY." [via Wizbang]

Michelle Malkin is as much of a night owl as I am.

A Kossite is already spinning it as not that great. [via Pajamas Media]