DUBAI - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the feared Islamist militant who was reported injured Tuesday, has topped the US most wanted list since Saddam Hussein's capture but proved elusive despite a huge bounty and relentless military pressure.
Accused of masterminding a large part of the Iraqi insurgency and some of its most gruesome attacks and hostage beheadings, the Jordanian-born Zarqawi remains an enigma.
The one-legged extremist, who has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head, was hunted in vain by US-led forces in the massive "Operation Matador" earlier this month near the Iraqi-Syrian border.
US military officials said they had captured Zarqawi's driver but just missed their big target at a checkpoint in western Iraq in February.
Zarqawi is believed to have jumped out of a truck near Hit, about 150 kilometres (90 miles) west of Baghdad, according to US officials, leaving his computer and cash behind.
He was previously targeted by a massive US-led offensive in November on the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah west of Baghdad and in December was formally named head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq in an audiotape message said to have been made by top terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Through his "Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers", which last year changed its name from Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), he has brought the horror of grisly video-taped beheadings to Iraq.
Among a host of such outrages, the group murdered British hostage Kenneth Bigley in December and two of his US colleagues in September.
A father-of-four with two wives, the 38-year-old also faces a death sentence in his native Jordan, where he was condemned in absentia in April to die for the 2002 killing of a US official.
Zarqawi, described as a "street thug" by King Abdullah II of Jordan, has not appeared in any videotapes since the US-led invasion of Iraq although there is some old footage of him in Afghanistan and grainy identity-style photographs.
Officials say he travels between Sunni strongholds in Iraq using observers who scout out whether the roads are clear.
In a May audiotape message posted on the Internet, a man purporting to be Zarqawi said all Muslims who were killed in Iraq were fair game, as he continued his fight against US troops and those who collaborate with them.
Born Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, Zarqawi was a poor student who never graduated from high school.
People in his hometown of Zarqa, from where he gets his name, remember a hot-headed youth, always armed with a pen-knife and a tattoo on his arm.
He became a radical for two reasons, those who knew him said.
He was shocked by the social openness that emerged in conservative Jordan with the arrival of tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled Kuwait after Iraq invaded the Gulf emirate in 1990.
He was also reportedly marked by a dream one of his sisters had, in which a sword came from the heavens bearing the word jihad (holy war) on one side and a verse from the Koran saying 'God will never abandon you and will never forget you.'
"This vision convinced him that he had a calling for an important role," a former acquaintance said.
After a period of delinquency, Zarqawi became awed by the teachings of radical Salafist Islamist Mohamad al-Makdessi, whom he met in Pakistan, where he worked as a journalist from 1988-1992 for mujahedeen newspapers.
Zarqawi, who faces a raft of charges in Jordan including plotting a massive chemical weapons attack against Jordanian intelligence headquarters, was previously sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in prison for membership in an illegal group and arms possession.
But he was later freed under a general amnesty by King Abdullah in May 1999.
A veteran of the Afghan war against Soviet occupation, a US-backed conflict in the 1980s that drew many Muslim idealists, his encounter with bin Laden took place in 2000 during visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In late 2001, he was wounded in combat and lost a leg after taking up arms against US-led forces fighting to unseat the Taliban.
Contrary to claims by US President George W. Bush, the fugitive has probably never mixed with followers of Saddam, a US officer has said.
At the moment, according to another high-ranking US officer, Zarqawi commands a force of 500 to 1,000 men, swelled by some Iraqi fundamentalists.

05/24/2005 16:12 GMT