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BAGHDAD - American journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped in Iraq last year, said today she did not recognise the photograph of a man killed by the US military as one of her captors, her employer, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
The US military said that it had killed Muharib Abdul Latif al-Jubouri, who it said was a top al Qaeda operative in Iraq involved in the kidnap of Carroll last year.
But in an article posted to the Monitor's website, the paper said Carroll "doesn't recognise the photo released by the military of Jubouri."
The article, which did not quote Carroll directly, paraphrased her as saying "the photo might be of a kidnapper whom she had taken to be a low-status guard."
Carroll was kidnapped in Iraq on January 7, 2006 and held for 82 days before being released unharmed.
Al-Jubouri's role
US military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell said Muharib Abdul Latif al-Jubouri was the "senior minister of information" for al Qaeda in Iraq.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier-General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf said Jubouri was also Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, a Qaeda-led group which has claimed many major attacks in the country.
But a statement from the group, posted on a website used by insurgents, said they were two different men and that Baghdadi was still alive. Jubouri, who the group identified as its spokesman, was killed in an air raid after a clash with "soldiers of the Cross" which lasted eight hours, it said.
Caldwell told a news conference that Jubouri was killed north of Baghdad on Tuesday, as part of an offensive against al Qaeda called "Operation Rat Trap".
"When we can pick up someone like that who has that kind of history in being associated with the kidnapping and killing of foreign nationals in this country, that's significant," he said.
Carroll, a journalist with the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, was abducted in January 2006 and held for 82 days before she was released. Fox was kidnapped in November 2005 and his body was found in March 2006.
Caldwell said Jubouri had also been involved in the kidnapping of two Germans, whom he did not identify but said they were captured in 2006.
He said the US military did not know who Baghdadi was, but added the demise of Jubouri might have contributed to confusion over just which top figure in al Qaeda had been killed in Iraq this week.
Iraqi officials had said Baghdadi was killed by Iraqi and US forces north of the capital. They have also said Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a battle between insurgents north of Baghdad, also this week.
"This is the individual I think has caused some of the recent confusion as to who was the senior person in the al Qaeda network who had been killed," Caldwell said, referring to Jubouri, adding his body had been identified through DNA tests.
Al Qaeda figures are often known by more than one name.
Iraqi state television earlier broadcast images of the body of a man it identified as Baghdadi. The body lay inside a wooden coffin in a truck, its head badly swollen and bruised.
'Public enemy number one'
Caldwell said the US military knew Jubouri was involved in the kidnappings of Carroll and Fox based on information from detainees.
"We know he was responsible for the transportation and movement of Jill Carroll from her various hiding places and we know he is responsible for propaganda and ransom videos for Jill Carroll," Caldwell said.
"(He) was the last one known to have personal custody of Tom Fox before his death," Caldwell added.
Both US President George W. Bush and the US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, have labeled Sunni Islamist al Qaeda as "public enemy number one" in Iraq in the past week.
That would appear to mark a shift, with the Pentagon previously calling anti-US Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia the greatest threat to peace in Iraq.
Al Qaeda is blamed for trying to foment civil war between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunni Arabs.
The network had killed or wounded up to 2,000 civilians in April alone in attacks using car bombs and suicide vests, Caldwell said.
The Islamic State in Iraq was set up in October by al Qaeda in Iraq and some minor Sunni Arab insurgent groups. Al Qaeda in Iraq remains the main al Qaeda network in the country.
Baghdadi's Islamic State in Iraq recently named a 10-man cabinet with a prime minister and portfolios including war.
- REUTERS
