A close aide of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was captured yesterday – as Iraqi troops discovered a laboratory with manuals on manufacturing explosives and toxins.
Abu Saeed, a lieutenant of Zarqawi, Iraq’s most feared terrorist leader and an al Qaeda ally, was taken into custody in Mosul.
And in Fallujah, Iraqi troops searching suspected terrorist hideouts discovered a laboratory with manuals on manufacturing explosives and toxins – including anthrax, Iraq’s national security adviser Qassem Dawoud said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. troops, celebrating Thanksgiving after some of their bloodiest weeks in Iraq, should brace for yet more losses as they pursue guerrillas bent on wrecking an election slated for January.
The warning comes as the U.S. assault on Fallujah has already made November the second deadliest month of the war for Americans, Pentagon figures show.
“No doubt, attacks will continue in the weeks and months ahead, and perhaps intensify as the Iraqi election approaches,” Rumsfeld told reporters in Washington.
As 138,000 U.S. troops celebrated Thanksgiving with turkey dinners at bases across Iraq, Pentagon figures showed 109 service personnel have died there in the first 3½ weeks of the month.
Only this past April has seen more losses.
More than 50 Americans were killed in the Fallujah assault.
In all, 1,230 U.S. service people have died since the invasion of Iraq 20 months ago.
* A U.S. official said that Binghamton, N.Y., native James Mollen, 48, who worked with the Iraqi ministers of education and higher education, was shot dead.
Mollen, who moved to Washington before taking the job overseas last year, was planning to spend Christmas with his family in Binghamton, a local newspaper reported yesterday.
With Post Wire Services