A Leader By Any Name Go BOOM!

This photo released by the U.S. Military at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, June 15, 2006, purports to show Abu Ayyub al-Masri who is allegedly the man claiming to be the new al-Qaida in Iraq leader and apparently the same person as a man identified by the nom de guerre Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, according to the U.S. Military, who has claimed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and vowed to avenge him in threatening web statements in recent days. Image Credit: AP Photo/U.S. Military

This is the guy the U.S. Military put a $50,000 bounty on after al-Zarqawi went BOOM.

There was some confusion about his name but that has all been cleared up now.

Excerpts from AP via Yahoo! News -

U.S. identifies al-Zarqawi's successor
AP - Thu Jun 15, 10:53 AM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Thursday the man claiming to be the new al-Qaida in Iraq leader is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian with ties to Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said al-Masri apparently is the same person that al-Qaida in Iraq identified in a Web posting last week as its new leader — Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, a nom de guerre. Al-Muhajer claimed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a June 7 U.S. airstrike, and vowed to avenge him in threatening Web statements in recent days.

The military showed a picture of al-Masri wearing a traditional white Arab headdress at a Baghdad news conference. The Afghanistan-trained explosives expert is a key figure in the al-Qaida in Iraq network with responsibility for facilitating the movement of foreign fighters from Syria into Baghdad, Caldwell said.
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