WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi survived the two bombs meant to kill him but died on a stretcher Wednesday outside the house while he was being medically attended by U.S. personnel, a top general said Friday.
Iraqi police forces, who were first on the scene, found Zarqawi and placed him on a stretcher. Shortly thereafter U.S. forces arrived. Zarqawi made a move to get off the stretcher and was restrained, and then died of wounds sustained in the blast, said Maj. Gen William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
"Everybody resecured him back onto the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he had received from the airstrike ... they went into the process to provide medical care to him."
Caldwell said. "If he said something to the Iraqi police I'm not aware of it."
U.S. forces reported that "he mumbled a little something, but it was indistinguishable and very short."
Caldwell said, contrary to rumors, Zarqawi had not been shot but died from his wounds.
"There was nothing in the report that said he had received any wounds from some kind of weapon system like that," Caldwell said.
Zarqawi's face was very bloodied and was physically cleaned before his picture was taken; the pictures were not digitally enhanced, Caldwell said.
"Despite the fact that this person actually had no regard for human life, we were not going to treat him in the same manner, and so they did clean his face up for the shots that were shown publicly," Caldell said.
Five others - three males and three females -- were killed in the house, including his spiritual adviser Sheik Abd Al Rahman. Initial reports put the dead at seven with a woman and child among those killed. Caldwell said according to the most current information he received there were no children among the casualties. None of the other four have been identified yet.
Caldwell said he does not know how Zarqawi survived the blast.
"That's the exact same question I asked," Caldwell told Pentagon reporters Friday by video-teleconference from Baghdad. "I sat down with several Air Force officers, to include some that were associated with the whole operation. And they assured me that there are cases when people, in fact, can survive even an attack like that on a building structure.
"Obviously, the other five in the building did not, but he did, for some reason. And we do not know, and I have looked through the reports, as to whether or not it was because he might have been right outside or whatever. We just don't have that granularity."
According to Caldwell, the thus-far unidentified operational commander decided to call in an F-16 strike rather than attack the safe house near Baqubah with ground forces. Two F-16s were airborne nearby; one aircraft dropped both precision bombs because the other was being refueled on an airborne tanker.
"Just before executing, (the operations officer) went ahead and ensured that his commanders above him had situation awareness of what was about to go down. So they had just a couple of minutes there as they called that F-16 in -- because they had two of them up there flying. One was sitting at tanker. So as they called in and asked for the operation to be executed, the other one couldn't come off the tanker. So that single bird came in on a single ship and executed that, which gave them a few minutes to do the notification up that they were about to take down Zarqawi," Caldwell said.
That account is at odds with the version of events given Thursday by a top Air Force general. Lt. Gen. Gary North, the chief of Central Command Air Forces, insisted to reporters Thursday the Zarqawi target was not time-sensitive, and that the pilots took all the time they needed to strike the target. North did not disclose that one of the aircraft was tied up refueling. Standard operating procedure calls for fighter jets to operate in pairs, for safety, self-defense, positive target identification and to guarantee enough firepower to take out a target.
Caldwell said he didn't know why the ground commander opted for an air strike.
"I would assume that if we were going to have gone in there and tried to have capture him, that would have taken some of kind of overwhelming force at that point in time, and that perhaps they didn't have it ready. But we'll have to check on that," Caldwell said.
The Zarqawi bombing was followed by at least 17 raids in, and with, a 15-miles radius of Baghdad during which at least 25 people suspected of working with Zarqawi were captured and one killed.
"There are certain personnel that we have been watching, that we have been monitoring, that the coalition forces had made the decision not to take down at that time because they were giving us key indicators at different points in time as to where Zarqawi might be. So they were just monitored, watched and tracked. But once Zarqawi went down, then that enabled us to go in and conduct those operations," Caldwell said.
Caldwell showed pictures of the booty from one raid in the Baghdad area, including multiple weapons, an Iraqi army uniform, body armor and one suicide bomb belt with a detonator.
No decision has been made yet what to do with Zarqawi's body. He has family in Jordan.
"Right now we are in consultation with the government of Iraq as far as the disposition of Zarqawi's body," Caldwell said. "They may have made a decision late here this afternoon. They had not as of noon today."
