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Military revises al-Zarqawi account
Posted 6/10/2006 7:02 AM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this
THE DEATH OF ZARQAWI
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — An Iraqi man who was one of the first people on the scene of the U.S. airstrike targeting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said he saw American troops beating a man who had a beard like the al-Qaeda leader.
The witness, who lives near the house where al-Zarqawi spent his last days, said he saw the man lying on the ground near an irrigation canal. He was badly wounded but still alive, the man told Associated Press Television News.
U.S. troops arriving on the scene wrapped the man's head in an Arab robe and began beating him, said the local man, who refused to give his name or show his face to the camera. His account could not be independently verified.
The U.S. military made no mention of any physical contact between U.S. troops and al-Zarqawi other than an attempt to provide him with medical attention.
Zarqawi died shortly after the U.S. military obliterated his hideout northwest of Baghdad Wednesday with two 500-pound bombs. The bombs tore a huge crater in the date palm forest where the house was nestled outside the town of Baqouba.
Initially, the military had said al-Zarqawi was killed outright. But on Friday, the spokesman for the U.S.-led forces in Iraq said Iraqi forces found al-Zarqawi clinging to life.
"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said of the Jordanian-born terrorist's last words.
Iraqi police pulled him from the flattened home and placed him on a makeshift stretcher. U.S. troops arrived, saw that al-Zarqawi was conscious, and tried to provide medical treatment, the spokesman said.
"He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was the U.S. military," Caldwell told Pentagon reporters via videoconference from Baghdad.
Al-Zarqawi "attempted to, sort of, turn away off the stretcher," he said. "Everybody re-secured him back onto the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he'd received from this airstrike."