IRAQ - May 1 - Leader Of Al Qaeda Group In Iraq Is Reported Killed.

The Iraqi government says that it is investigating reports from "reliable sources" that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, leader of the radical Islamist insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, had been killed in an ambush by a rival insurgent faction. Iraqi officials, desperate to show gains against a relentless insurgency, have in the past trumpeted the killing or capture of major insurgent leaders, only to retract the claims later when the suspects turned out to have been wrongly identified. American military commanders said they could not confirm the reports. "Because of misreporting about the fate of senior leaders in the past", the American military is "going to be doubly sure before we attempt to confirm or deny anything", said Lieutenant Col Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad. "We seem to capture or kill al-Masri every month", he said. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, the Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, told the state-run Iraqiya television network that "reliable sources from the Interior Ministry witnessed the killing". "But the Interior Ministry does not have the body yet because there are no ministry forces in that area". He said government forces were trying to retrieve the body and confirm its identity. Khalaf, citing the ministry's intelligence sources, said Masri had been killed in an ambush in the Nibaee region north of Baghdad by a faction within Al Qaeda. But the spokesman did not provide a reason for the attack. A former Iraqi Army officer who claimed to be a leader of an armed resistance movement based in Anbar Province said in a telephone interview that Masri had been killed in fighting between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and militias tied to Sunni Arab tribes north-west of Baghdad. The resistance leader said the tribal militias were co-operating with Iraqi security forces and had supported the opening of police stations in their region against the wishes of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Masri, an Egyptian, assumed command of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia last June after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who oversaw the early growth of the organisation, a decentralised collection of semi-autonomous terrorist groups.