Al Qaida chief of operations in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, wears a suicide bomb belt so he can kill himself if capture appears imminent - a practice that apparently drove U.S. forces to suspect that he was one of three terrorists who blew themselves up after they surrounded a safehouse in Mosul on Saturday.
"He has sworn never to be taken alive by the U.S.," ABC newsman Brian Ross reported Monday, adding: "He actually travels with his own suicide explosive belt."
While U.S. officials remain publicly skeptical that Zarqawi was among those killed, DNA tests are continuing in a bid to determine the identities of the three terrorists who committed suicide using explosive devices.
Joint forces backed by U.S. military helicopters surrounded the house after receiving a tip that Zarqawi might be inside, the governor of Nineveh province, Duraid Kashmoula, told the Washington Post.
The Iraqi official put the chances that Zarqawi was among the dead at 30 percent.
Over the past month, Kashmoula told the paper, there has been a series of raids following a surge in tips from Iraqis who have turned on Zarqawi. "Their feeling is that al Qaida in Iraq has overstepped its bounds," he explained.
Zarqawi, who regularly issues public communiqu�s on audiotape and via the Internet, has not been heard from since Saturday's attack.
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