Al Qaeda in Iraq confirms deaths of its leaders

BAGHDAD - Al Qaeda in Iraq Sunday confirmed the death of two of its leaders, nearly a week after Iraqi forces said they were killed in a raid, al-Arabiya television news reported.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last week announced the death of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, and Sheikh Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Sunni Islamist insurgency in Iraq.

Abu al-Walid Abdel-Wahhab al-Mashadani, the self-styled “Sharia Minister” of the Islamic State of Iraq, was quoted in a statement published by al-Qaeda on Islamist Internet forums as saying that al-Masri and al-Baghdadi were killed in a military operation April 18, some 80 km northwest of Baghdad.

The statement said that both leaders were attending a meeting when “enemy forces engaged them in battle and launched an airstrike on their location”.

On Friday, at least 63 people were killed and 180 injured in a series of bomb blasts that have been described as an act of revenge by Al Qaeda, after several of its senior leaders were arrested and killed in the country over the past few weeks.