Report: Iraqi security forces kill Saddam aide al Douri, but DNA will confirm

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Report: Iraqi security forces kill Saddam aide al Douri, but DNA will confirm

Tribune News Service | Friday, April 17, 2015 11:26 p.m.

REUTERS

A woman who fainted, is transported in a wheelbarrow by her brother as displaced Sunni people, who fled the violence in the city of Ramadi, arrive at the outskirts of Baghdad, April 17, 2015. Iraqi security forces fought Islamic State militants at the gates of the western city of Ramadi on Friday, and local authorities warned it was in danger of falling unless reinforcements arrived soon. REUTERS/Stringer

IRBIL, Iraq — Security forces on Friday killed Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, the highest-ranking member of the late Saddam Hussein's regime to escape the U.S.-led invasion and occupation, Iraqi officials said.

A photo supposedly taken of the dead man by soldiers involved in the operation and distributed on Twitter closely resembled al Douri, including notable red hair and a red beard. Final confirmation of his identity will come from DNA testing over the next few days, the Salahuddin provincial governor's office told McClatchy.

A Kurdish security official who knew al Douri agreed the photo looked like the man he had known, but he added that in light of past rumors of al Douri's death in combat or from illness, DNA testing would be necessary to confirm his identity.

No official photo was released.

The Kurdish security official, who asked not to be identified to avoid tensions with officials in Baghdad over credit for the death, said the man thought to be al Douri was traveling in a small convoy with about nine bodyguards in a hilly, rural area south of the city of Kirkuk and north of Tikrit when it was fired on. The official would not comment on whether the convoy was being tracked by air.

Iraqi security officials in Baghdad, speaking to local television news, claimed that Iraqi security forces ambushed the convoy and that at least three of the 10 men were wearing suicide vests that were detonated in the ensuing gunfight. Those details could not be confirmed independently.

Al Douri's militant group, the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, made no comment on the developments Friday. But the nearly defunct Iraqi Baath Party, Saddam's political group, issued an online statement denying the death, which it described as a rumor.

Often rumored to have been killed or captured, al Douri formed the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order after the fall of Saddam's regime to fight American forces in Iraq and oppose the Shiite-dominated government that replaced Saddam's Sunni-led regime. He later aligned his forces with the Islamic State as the Islamist extremists overran much of northern and central Iraq in June 2014.

A government statement said that al Douri's death represented a major blow to the military capabilities of the Islamic State, which has worked hard to absorb former military and intelligence officers from the Saddam regime despite at least a superficial difference in ideology between the former secular Baathists and the Islamist radicals.

Many analysts have credited the former military professionals for the training that has enabled the Islamic State's victories over the past 18 months.

The exact relationship between al Douri's organization and the Islamic State has been the subject of significant speculation, however, amid persistent rumors of rifts over governance and military strategy.

Details

U.S. consulate target
of suicide bombing

Tribune News Service

IRBIL — A suicide bomber struck the U.S. Consulate building in this northern Iraqi city Friday afternoon.

Kurdish authorities said at least three people were killed and five were wounded.

A Kurdish security official at the scene said the dead were the three attackers. Among the wounded were two Westerners who were in a restaurant across the street, witnesses said.

Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary of State for Iraq and Iran, wrote in a Twitter post that all consulate personnel had been accounted for and that there were no reports of injuries among them. He included the hashtag VBIED, short for vehicle-born improvised explosive device.

The Islamic State, which is pressing offensives in the cities of Ramadi and Baiji, claimed responsibility for the explosion in an Internet post.

The attack was the first direct assault on American facilities in Iraq since the Islamic State took control of much of the northern and central areas of the country last summer, and only the second bombing in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government, a city considered so safe that the United States moved many of its diplomats here from Baghdad when the Islamic State captured the city of Mosul and threatened Baghdad last year.

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