U.S.-led forces said they shot dead a leader of al Qaeda in Iraq on Friday who was the mastermind behind a series of deadly recent bombings in Baghdad. A spokesman for coalition forces said Mahir Ahmad Mahmud Judu' al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Assad or Abu Rami, had been al Qaeda in Iraq's "emir" of the Rusafa neighborhood of the capital. Troops surrounded a building in the Adhamiya area of Baghdad after intelligence reports that Abu Rami was inside, and called on the occupants to surrender, the spokesman said. Coalition forces were shot at from the building and returned fire, killing Abu Rami and a female, spokesman Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll said in a statement. A cell in Abu Rami's network was believed to be responsible for attacks on Thursday which killed eight people and wounded more than 30, the statement said.