IRAQ - Sep 25 - Al-Qaeda's Number Two Killed In Baghdad.

US and Iraqi troops kill the Baghdad commander for Al Qaeda Abdallah Najim Abdallah Mohammad Al Juwairi, better known as Abu Azzam, amid worsening sectarian violence less than three weeks before national voting on a divisive draft constitution. Acting on an informant tip-off, a joint US-Iraqi raiding force shot and killed after he resisted capture at a multi-storey apartment building early on Sep 25 morning, the US military confirmed. US spokesmen described him as Iraq's "second most wanted al-Qaeda terrorist", after Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born militant who recently declared war on Iraq's Shiite population for allegedly collaborating with foreign occupiers. As an operational commander, Abu Azzam was thought to be responsible for the unexpectedly bloody wave of suicide car bombings that followed the formation of an elected government, dominated by Shiite and Kurdish parliamentary blocs, at the end of April. According to the US military, he also helped to orchestrate the latest upsurge of violence in and around the capital during the past two weeks, which has killed hundreds of mostly Shiite civilians and policemen. Abu Azzam was also sometimes described as a financier for wider insurgent operations and a "religious aide" to Zarqawi. "We've been tracking him for a while," a US military spokesman in Iraq, Lt Col Steve Boylan, said. The raid on the hideout was based on "multiple intelligence sources and corroborating information from a close associate of Abu Azzam", a military statement said. Last year, Abu Azzam served as commander in western Iraq's Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency, and led Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters at Falluja, where besieging US troops tried to stamp out the network's leadership. The insurgent campaign continued despite the Baghdad commander's elimination.