Top al-Qa'ida lieutenant killed in Baghdad

Abdullah Abu Azzam was a top aide to the organisation's leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and had a US$50,000 reward on his head from the US military.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a US military spokesman, said US and Iraqi forces, acting on a tip, raided a high-rise apartment building in Baghdad where Abu Azzam was found early on Sunday. "They went in to capture him, he did not surrender and he was killed in the raid," Boylan told The Associated Press.

Maj. Flora Lee, another US military spokesperson in Baghdad, said Tuesday that shooting occurred at "a terrorist safe house."

In February, Abu Azzam was named on a US military list of the 29 most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in Iraq. He was known as the "amir," or "prince" of Anbar, the Western province that has been the heartland of Iraq's Sunni Arab-led insurgency and claimed responsibility for the assassinations of a number of top politicians.

Sketchy information the killing of Abu Azzam was first emerged yesterday by US officials in Washington. But it wasn't immediately clear then if he was the man on the US list.

Elsewhere, in Baqouba, 50 kilometres north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber attacked Iraqis applying for jobs as policemen, killing nine and wounding 21.

The Iraqis were submitting applications to join Iraq's Quick Reaction Police Force, said the police commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about his security.

The blast, set off by explosives hidden under the insurgent's clothing, occurred inside a police building where the applications were being filled out and accepted, the commander said.

Adhid Mita'ab, an official in Baqouba General Hospital, where the casualties were rushed, said nine Iraqis were killed and 21 wounded. The commander confirmed those figures.

That raised to at least 61 the number of people killed in the past three days in Iraq, less than a month before a national referendum on Iraq's draft constitution.