{"id":1197,"date":"2005-11-21T23:13:13","date_gmt":"2005-11-22T05:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2005-11-21T23:13:40","modified_gmt":"2005-11-22T05:13:40","slug":"iraq-awaits-verdict-of-dna-test-on-zarqawi-corpse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1197","title":{"rendered":"Iraq Awaits Verdict of DNA Test on Zarqawi ‘Corpse’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Folks, don’t get your hopes up yet about the possibility of the bastard Zarqawi being offed<\/a> this weekend.<\/p>\n

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in the Middle East, may have been killed in a firefight in Iraq, according to the country’s Foreign Minister.<\/p>\n

Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday that urgent DNA tests were being carried out on the bodies of several people who died when US and Iraqi forces stormed a house in the northern city of Mosul.<\/p>\n

The US administration, which had offered a $25m (\u00c2\u00a315m) reward for the leader of al-Qa’ida in Iraq, played down the reports. But Mr Zebari, during a visit to Moscow, said: “American and Iraqi forces are investigating the possibility that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s corpse is among the bodies of some terrorists who died in the special military operation in Mosul.”<\/p>\n

State television in Jordan, where 59 people died in a series of hotel bombings for which Zarqawi’s group has claimed responsibility, carried the alleged death as “urgent news” in a scrolling newsbar at the bottom of the screen, suggesting that Jordanian officials believe the report to be credible.<\/p>\n

Eight fighters, supposedly senior members of the group al-Qa’ida in Iraq, died after special forces and other soldiers surrounded a house following a surveillance operation. Four of them were killed during a three-hour assault on the two-storey building. The rest blew themselves up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If indeed Zarqawi was present, the assault must have truly been a surprise — after all, we’re talking about a coward who sent thousands to martyr themselves in Fallujah while he slipped out before the fight. I guess it’s that slimy nature that leaves me to doubt that the punk actually would go out in a blaze of glory, and the U.S. attempts to tone down hopes further lead me to believe that Zarqawi is not yet taking that long dirtnap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Folks, don’t get your hopes up yet about the possibility of the bastard Zarqawi being offed this weekend. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in the Middle East, may have been killed in a firefight in Iraq, according to the country’s Foreign Minister. Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday that urgent DNA tests were being carried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}