BAGHDAD - Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former aide to late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a leader of Iraq’s insurgency, may have been killed by Iraqi forces and militias fighting the insurgents.
Douri was killed in a military operation, Raed al-Jubouri, the governor of Salahuddin province, told Reuters. The pan-Arab television network al-Arabiya showed photos of a dead man who looked like al-Douri.
However, Khdhayer Almurshidy, a spokesman for Iraq’s former Baath party, said in comments to Iraq’s al-Hadath television that the reports were false. Al-Douri was a senior member of the party.
Al-Jubouri told Reuters that “a group of security forces went and surrounded the area and those terrorists were killed. Three of them were suicide bombers and blew themselves up. Amongst the bodies was Douri’s.”
He said the operation was carried out in the Hamrin area near al Alam in Salahuddin province, but that Iraqi forces did not know al-Douri was there beforehand.
Jubouri also spoke to al-Arabiya, where he described the operation as a major victory. He said al-Douri “is considered a mastermind for this terrorist group,” referring to Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda which has taken swathes of Syria and Iraq. “For sure, this will have an impact on them ... There will be a break among them,” he said.
Baghdad has mounted an offensive against Islamic State and former Baathists once loyal to Saddam Hussein to retake territory in Iraq’s heartland captured by jihadists last summer. Al-Douri was believed to be a key figure in that insurgency.
While Baghdad has announced al-Douri’s death several times before, this time photos were circulating showing a man with similar features and red hair like al-Douri’s. Al-Jubouri told Reuters that DNA from the body will be tested and results will be released to confirm it is him “very soon”. Ahmed al-Kraim, the head of Salahuddin provincial council, said news of al-Douri’s death was not confirmed and intelligence officers who tracked his movements did not believe he was the man in the photographs. Khaled Jassam, a member of the security committee in Salahuddin provincial council, said the committee were 70 percent sure al-Douri had been killed but were awaiting medical tests.
After Saddam Hussein was toppled and before al Qaeda and later Islamic State rose to prominence, al-Douri led an insurgency against Baghdad’s government, organising and leading major attacks against symbols of the new rule.
Former Baathists in Iraq have also joined forces with Islamic State to fight Baghdad. Islamic State, a Muslim militant group, has seized a third of Syria and large areas of Iraq and this year proclaimed a caliphate across the two countries in the heart of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, a car bombing targeting the US consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital Erbil killed one person and wounded five on Friday, the local mayor said.
A Reuters witness heard the blast which was followed by brief gunfire. “A car bomb exploded outside the entrance to the US consulate,” Nihad Qoja told Reuters. “It seems the consulate was the target.”
Photographs posted on social media showed black smoke rising from behind multi-storey buildings in the Ankawa district, a predominantly Christian neighbourhood packed with cafes that is popular with foreigners.
Meanwhile,thousands of civilians have fled escalating fighting between pro-government forces and jihadists in the Iraqi city of Ramadi over the past week, the United Nations said on Friday.
The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said 4,250 families had fled their homes in the Ramadi area since April 8.
That day, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that the security forces, fresh from a victory in the city of Tikrit, would next seek to retake Anbar province from jihadists.
The fighting so far has centred around the provincial capital Ramadi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, and the Garma area farther east.
Government forces, which controlled only small pockets of the centre of Ramadi and some neighbouring areas, attacked but lost more ground in a fierce IS counteroffensive.
OCHA said 9,000 people were forced to leave the northern Albu Faraj area for the centre of Ramadi, “where they have taken up refuge in schools and mosques, or have moved on to Baghdad.”
The interior ministry said that 1,800 families newly displaced from Anbar had travelled to the capital.
According to the International Organisation for Migration, the total number of people displaced in Iraq is close to 2.7 million.
Many of those are from Anbar, where fighting between government forces and militants had displaced hundreds of thousands even before IS overran most of the province in June last year.
More were forced from their homes in successive waves of violence in Ramadi, Hit and Al-Baghdadi, among other towns in the province.
Analysts have warned that retaking the vast province is an unrealistic target for Iraq’s restructuring security services and that even more limited goals in Anbar would pose serious challenges.