Confusion Over Fate of Al-qaida in Iraq Leader After Four Die in Raid

Iraqi and US officials were plunged into confusion yesterday over reports that Iraq's most wanted man, the al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, had been killed in a raid earlier this week in Haditha.

If true, the killing of al-Qaida in Iraq's new chief so soon after the death of its former leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would be a major coup for the Iraqi government, which said last week that it was closing in on him.

Four al-Qaida suspects had died in a raid, giving rise to the initial reports that Masri was among the dead. But US and Iraqi officials said later that it did not seem likely that he had died. "We have no reason to believe that we've killed al-Masri," Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson said. "We are doing DNA testing to completely eliminate the possibility that this would be al-Masri, but we do not believe it is."

The reports coincided with a surprise visit to Baghdad by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, at the end of her Middle East tour this week. She was due to meet the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, and was expected to discuss the deteriorating security situation. "They don't have time for endless debate of these issues," Ms Rice told reporters. "They have really got to move forward."

Masri took over al-Qaida in Iraq after Zarqawi was killed on June 7 in a US air strike. On Sunday Iraq's national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, said that US and Iraqi forces were closing in on him. That optimism had apparently been raised by the capture of an assistant to Masri in a raid in Baghdad on September 28.

In the southern city of Samawa gunmen killed three Shia women and slit the throat of an 18-month-old girl on Wednesday evening. Two people were killed in a car bomb in a Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad yesterday, while 21 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the weekend.

Mr Maliki said on state television that security would be achieved within the "next two or three months".