Zarqawi shot in lung

Washington Post:

Insurgents said Wednesday in interviews and statements on the Internet that the leader of the group al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was struggling with a gunshot wound to the lung. One of Zarqawi's commanders said the Jordanian guerrilla was receiving oxygen, heightening suspicion that the groundwork was being laid for an announcement of his replacement or death.

...

On the second day of reporting about Zarqawi's condition, insurgents offered no tangible evidence that he had suffered a potentially fatal wound. Some of Zarqawi's rank-and-file fighters and one of his top lieutenants have said he was wounded in an ambush by U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces over the weekend around the western city of Ramadi. A U.S. military official, Lt. Col. David Lapan, said Wednesday that he had found no record of such an ambush.

The insurgents' accounts suggested that steady U.S. and Iraqi military pressure was taking a toll on Zarqawi's group. In an interview Tuesday, the Zarqawi lieutenant, Abu Karrar, said his group was weighing both foreigners and Iraqis as possible successors to Zarqawi if he died.

...

Iraqi Sunni insurgents -- some of whom are allied with foreign fighters such as Zarqawi -- expressed the view Wednesday that the attrition among his top lieutenants may have undercut his support within the insurgency. Proponents of that view ascribed Tuesday's sudden announcement of his grave injury to a power struggle within his group.

Haitham Husseini, spokesman for the country's leading Shiite coalition, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told the Associated Press that officials were trying to confirm reports that Zarqawi had been killed in western Iraq. He did not elaborate.

Hani Sibaie, who runs a London-based Islamic affairs research center, told the AP that al Qaeda in Iraq's call for Muslims to pray for Zarqawi meant he was in serious condition. "It is obvious that he is dying and his days are numbered," Sibaie said.

A leader in Zarqawi's organization, identifying himself by the battlefield name Abu Jalal Iraqi, said in an interview that Zarqawi's health "wasn't easy."


Sounds like a sucking chest wound. It is tempting to say that it sucks to be Zarqawi right now. May he have a speedy, but painful demise.

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