Iraqi forces have captured the leader of an al-Qaeda linked group, but he is not Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq, as previously reported.
 
Iraqi officials said on Saturday that investigations had proven the man captured in a raid on Friday was not al-Baghdadi but was "a senior al-Qaeda leader".
 
  
"We captured a figure who was a senior al-Qaeda member and we suspected that he was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, but after initial investigations it was proven it was not Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. But he was a senior al-Qaeda leader," said Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman of the Baghdad security operation.
 
 "Interrogations and investigations are still under way to get more information," he said.
 
Al-Moussawi had previously said that al-Baghdadi had been captured in a raid in Abu Ghraib on the outskirts of Baghdad, a report later verified by a senior adviser to Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister.
 
"One of the terrorists who was arrested with him confessed that the one in our hands is al-Baghdadi," al-Moussawi said on Iraqiya state television on Friday.
 
Al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, has been identified in statements posted on websites as the self-styled head of the Islamic State of Iraq, proclaimed last year after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
 
The Islamic State of Iraq, said to be linked to al-Qaeda and armed Sunni groups, has claimed responsibility for a string of major attacks.
 
US and Iraqi forces have increasingly focused on al-Baghdadi's group in their attempts to end sectarian violence in Iraq.
 
Al-Baghdadi is also said to have headed the Mujahidin Shura Council, an alliance of al-Qaeda and other hardline groups. Very little is known about al-Baghdadi and his capture would be hard for officials to verify.

Photo caption

An Iraqi army soldier