June 2006
Zarqawi's End
"The man was an animal and he deserved what he got. And may he rot in hell."
—Paul Bigley, whose brother was beheaded by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an interview with Britain's Channel Four television network
Sunni insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who U.S. authorities say is responsible for scores of kidnappings, beheadings, and bombings, is killed June 7 in an airstrike on a safe house north of Baghdad. The Jordanian-born Zarqawi was a leader of al-Qaeda's Iraq insurgency campaign, which sought to widen the divide between Iraq's Sunnis and Shi'ites to prolong the conflict. Despite the power of two 500-pound bombs, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers find the most wanted man in Iraq still alive but critically wounded, saying his prayers. The U.S. hopes his death will be a blow to the insurgency, but those prayers turn out, for the most part, not to be answered.