Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive and tried to escape when American troops reached his hideout where war planes had dropped two 500-pound bombs that killed the al Qaeda leader, the US military said on Friday.
Major General William Caldwell, the spokesman for the US military in Baghdad, said a wounded Zarqawi tried to roll off the stretcher he was being carried on by Iraqi police when he saw US forces arrive at the bombed-out house. "We were not aware yesterday that in fact, Zarqawi was alive when US forces arrived on the site," Caldwell 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, realising it was US military," he told Fox television news.
CURFEW LIFTED: Following one of the quietest days in weeks in Baghdad, the government lifted a daytime vehicle curfew it had imposed amid fears of al Qaeda reprisals. It extended the ban in the town of Baquba, near where US planes killed Zarqawi. Suicide car bombers launched by Zarqawi have attacked Shia mosques in the past as part of a campaign to plunge Iraq into sectarian civil war.
Fugitive Afghan Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar vowed that the killing of Zarqawi would not weaken Muslim efforts against "crusader forces", a report said. Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said the death of Zarqawi would help improve oil production, crippled by violence.