Zarqawi Group Has Up To 1,500 Operatives Across Iraq: Report

BAGHDAD, Sept 23 (AFP) - The Islamist organisation of the most wanted man in Iraq, Jordanian-born Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, counts up to 1,500 members across the country, according to an Iraqi intelligence report.
A source close to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi confirmed the existence of such a report, which was quoted in the Thursday edition of the premier's Baghdad daily newspaper.
According to the article, "Zarqawi's terror group is made up of about 1,000-1,500 operatives coming from Iraq as well as a number of Arab and Islamic countries.
"Some of the elements are not actually fighters but are explosives and weapons experts," it added.
The report singled out two foreigners as top associates of the man who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head and whose Tawhid wal Jihad group this week decapitated two US hostages and still holds their British colleague.
One of the non-Iraqis was named as Abu Ali, a missiles specialist whose nationality was not specified.
The other was referred to as Abu Mohammed, a Lebanese military officer thought to have spent several years in Denmark before coming to Iraq after president Saddam Hussein's ouster in April 2003.
According to the report, Tawhid wal Jihad is headquartered in Fallujah, a restive Sunni city west of Baghdad that has in recent months become a fundamentalist enclave where US troops no longer venture.
It said the extremist organisations, responsible for the execution of scores of hostages and a string of suicide bomb attacks since last year, is run by nine "emirs" -- or princes -- each in charge of a different area.
Baghdad's emir was identified as Omar Bazyani saying that he was "recently arrested by Iraqi foces and has made important confessions about the group".
The document identified Zarqawi's deputy in Iraq as Abu Mahdi al-Shami, saying he was probably Syrian.
The report, which was also quoted in several other newspapers, says some 500 members of Zarqawi's network are based in Fallujah, up to 400 in the northern city of Mosul and around 50 in Baghdad.
Another 60 insurgents loyal to Zarqawi are thought to be operating in Al-Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and the town of Ramadi.
Other concentrations of Tawhid wal Jihad operatives include a cell of 50 in the restive city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, and an 80-strong group in the Diyala province of eastern Iraq that includes the hotspot of Baquba.
Up to 150 members of the organisation are stationed in the town of Qaem on the Syrian border while the rest are scattered across the country, according to the report.
"The main objective of the network is to turn Iraq into an inferno for both Iraqis and foreigners living in the country by sustaining the war," it said.
"They want to fuel sectarian conflict and hamper the establishment of a sustainable legitimate ruling system through elections," the newspaper Baghdad said, quoting the report.