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The leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq was killed yesterday in a fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said, but US military officials appeared to cast doubt on the report.

Raising further question marks on the purported killing of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Iraqiya state television: "This does not represent an official government announcement but is only information that reached the Iraqi Interior Ministry about internal fighting between groups and within Al-Qaida."

There has been growing friction between Sunni Islamist Al-Qaida and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups over Al-Qaida's indiscriminate killing of civilians and its imposition of an austere brand of Islam in the areas where it holds sway.

If true, al-Masri's killing would signal a deepening split at a time when the Shi'ite-led government is trying to woo some insurgent groups into the political process.

Interior Ministry spokesman, Brigadier-General Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said al-Masri was killed in a battle near a bridge in the small town of Al-Nibayi, north of Baghdad.

"We have definite intelligence reports that al-Masri was killed today," he said.

Both Khalaf and another Interior Ministry source said the Iraqi authorities did not have al-Masri's body, but the source added that "our people had seen the body".

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, citing security and intelligence reports, said he understood al-Masri had been killed on Monday.

The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq denied al-Masri was killed. "The Islamic State in Iraq assures the Islamic nation about the safety of Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, may God save him, and that he is still fighting the enemies," said the Qaida-linked group in a statement posted on a website used by militants.

The US military was checking the reports, said Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver, a spokesman.

"We are in discussions with the Iraqis over how they obtained this intelligence. If we do have a body, we are going to conduct DNA tests, and that will take several days. If there is no body, that makes it harder," Garver said.

In February, Interior Ministry sources said al-Masri had been wounded in a gunbattle north of Baghdad, but those reports turned out not to be true. There were also reports in October that he had been killed, which again were incorrect.

Al-Masri, believed to be Egyptian and who is also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, assumed the leadership of Al-Qaida in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006. The United States has a $5 million bounty on al-Masri's head.

Sunni threat 

On the political front, Iraq's main Sunni bloc is considering quitting the Shi'ite-led government because it believes the concerns of Sunnis are not being addressed, members of the bloc including the vice president said yesterday.

Some members of the Sunni Accordance Front have been urging the bloc for several months to pull out of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's cabinet, partly over accusations that reconciliation with minority Sunni Arabs has moved too slowly.

The bloc has six ministers in the government and a withdrawal would be a blow to Al-Maliki and raise questions about how representative his administration would remain.

(China Daily May 2, 2007)