Terrorists dispute that leader’s death will affect attacks

Published Thursday, June 8, 2006

LONDON (AP) - Islamic militants and world governments warned today that violence would continue in Iraq and around the globe despite the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said al-Zarqawi’s death was a victory.

"The death of al-Zarqawi is a strike against al-Qaida in Iraq and, therefore, a strike against al-Qaida everywhere, but we should have no illusions," Blair said at his monthly news conference. "We know that they will continue to kill; we know that there are many, many obstacles to overcome."

A former close aide to Osama bin Laden said today that al-Zarqawi’s death would spark retaliatory attacks across Iraq.

"Al-Zarqawi’s martyrdom is not going to weaken the jihad in Iraq," Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistani intelligence officer who helped bin Laden fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press.

"Rather, you will soon see more retaliatory attacks by his successors."

The father of a U.S. contractor believed slain by al-Zarqawi, said he did not see any good coming from the terror leader’s death.

Michael Berg, whose 26-year-old son, Nicholas, was taken hostage and beheaded on videotape in 2004, said al-Zarqawi’s death leaves the terror leader’s family in grief and likely will spark fresh violence.

"I see more death coming out of al-Zarqawi’s death," said Berg, a pacifist running for Delaware’s lone U.S. House seat on the Green Party ticket.

Al-Zarqawi also is believed to have beheaded Eugene Armstrong, a 52-year-old contractor formerly from Hillsdale, Mich.

"An evil man is dead, and what more can you say?" said family spokeswoman Cyndi Armstrong, the wife of the slain man’s cousin.

During a visit to Islamabad, Pakistan, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar said al-Zarqawi’s death was only a minor loss to the anti-U.S. resistance movement.

"We are dead sure that assassination of any of the people" such as al-Zarqawi "who are resisting will not ... end the resistance," said Zahar, a hard-line Hamas leader.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, a close aide of the militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who is in prison for conspiracy in the deadly 2002 Bali bombings, said al-Zarqawi’s death would not affect the fight by Islamic militants.

"The arrest or death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi does not mean the end of the struggle because Islam does not depend on any personality," Fauzan al-Ansory said.