The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was wounded by Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad, Interior Ministry sources said today.
A report by Iraq's state-run television indicated that Abu Ayyub al-Masri had escaped the gun battle yesterday after being hurt.
It was reported that a Masri aide had been killed in the clash, which one source said occurred when a group of al-Qaeda militants were intercepted by Iraqi police while on their way to the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Militants destroyed a holy Shia shrine in Samarra a year ago, an act that unleashed an upsurge in sectarian bloodletting that has since driven Iraq closer to all-out civil war.
Masri, an Egyptian, assumed the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a US air strike in June 2006.
The US military has described him as a close Zarqawi associate who trained in Afghanistan and formed al-Qaeda's first cell in Baghdad. The United States has put a $5 million bounty on Masri's head.