BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 8 (UPI) -- No official Arab comment was made yet on the killing of al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, despite diverse popular reactions.
In the Shiite holy city of Najaf in central Iraq, residents took to the streets by the hundreds to express their happiness over the elimination of Zarqawi who had recently declared war on the Shiites.
The demonstrators gathered at the center of the old city, home of one of the Shiite's holiest shrines, shouting slogans that praised the government and denounced terrorism.
"Death, death to terrorism and the nation stays high above Zarqawi's stubbornness," chanted the jubilating crowd as gunmen fired the guns in the air.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose real name is Ahmed Fadel Nazzal al-Khalayila, was killed in a U.S. air raid on his hideout near Baaqouba east of Baghdad Wednesday evening.
In Jordan, Islamists represented by the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood Organization, said Zarqawi's death will not end resistance against occupation in Iraq.
The IAF's secretary general Zaki Bin Arshid told United Press International "the operation of eliminating Abu Musab Zarqawi will not affect the resistance against occupation of Iraq... Zarqawi was not the founder of the resistance against occupation but one of its elements and his killing does not mean the end of resistance."
In south Lebanon, the Lebanese army closed the entrances to the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the country where two Palestinian fundamentalist groups linked to al-Qaida are based.
Security sources in the southern city of Sidon said masked gunmen from the organizations of "Jund al-Sham" and "Esbat al-Ansar" were placed on guard and took to the streets of the camp of Ein el-Hilweh following the spread of news of Zarqawi's death.
