WASHINGTON - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was alive and made a move to escape when US troops reached the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, mortally wounded in an American bombing raid, a US general said yesterday.
The attack that killed Zarqawi and his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdul-Rahman, yielded valuable informationfor several subsequent raids in Iraq, Major General William Caldwell, the spokesman for the US military in Baghdad, told Fox News.
"We were not aware yesterday that in fact, Zarqawi was alive when US forces arrived on the site," Caldwell said.
Iraqi police first reached the bombed safe house in a village north of Baghdad and put Zarqawi on a stretcher, Caldwell said. US ground forces then arrived and identified Zarqawi, who died shortly afterward.
"He was conscious initially, according to the US forces that physically saw him. 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 US military," Caldwell said.
Zarqawi gave up no information before he died, but the attack has yielded unprecedented intelligence about his network, Caldwell said.
"We had two of the most prominent figures from the al Qaeda network in Iraq here on site in that location ... anything they had we now have in coalition forces' possession and in fact are exploiting it."
Caldwell said no single tip led US and Iraqi forces to the village of Hibhib.
"It wasn't like somebody said 'at that house at this time, you will find Zarqawi.' That did not occur," he said.
He said there were 17 raids in Iraq shortly after the attack, some made possible by intelligence gained in it. The intelligence also helped support some of an additional 39 raids Thursday night.
There were six people in house at the time of the attack, three women and three men, Caldwell said at a Pentagon briefing. There were no survivors, he said.
