Iraqi officials jumped the gun yesterday when they announced the capture of the top commander of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the US military said today. It turns out the man they captured isn’t Abu Ayyub al-Masri; he just has a similar name. The hunt for the real al-Masri, who has a $5 million bounty on his head, is still going on.
“The person who was detained has nothing to do with him,” said an Iraqi government spokesman. “He is not even a senior leader in al-Qaeda, he is just an ordinary member.” (More Abu Ayyub al Masri stories.)