NYT: Questions lingering from US reports of Zarqawi's death

RAW STORY
Published: Saturday June 10, 2006

There are many lingering questions about the killing of Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi due to conflicting accounts of what happened, according to a story set for the front page of Sunday's New York Times.

The paper wonders how Zarqawi could have survived such a devastating attack even for a few moments, and how the terrorist leader's head and upper body "could have remained largely intact."

Also, while initial reports from Iraq indicated that a child had been killed in the air strike, the US Military denied that until today.

"At a briefing in Baghdad on Saturday, the American command's chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, reversed an earlier announcement he had made and confirmed that one of the six people who died in the bombing with Mr. Zarqawi was a small girl, around 5 or 6 years old," The Times is now reporting.

Excerpts from the article written by Dexter Filkins and John F. Burns:

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Still, given the extraordinary destruction evident at the house, a number of questions lingered, including how anyone could have survived such an attack, even for a few minutes, as American and Iraqi officials say Mr. Zarqawi did. It seemed puzzling, too, surveying the destruction, how Mr. Zarqawi's head and upper body, shown on television screens across the world, could have remained largely intact.

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With rumors circulating in the Iraqi news media that Mr. Zarqawi had begun to run from the house as the first bomb struck, American officials said Saturday that two military pathologists had arrived in Iraq to perform an autopsy on Mr. Zarqawi's body to determine the precise cause of his death.

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General Caldwell said the changing details were a result of the confusion typical in the immediate aftermath of military operations. "There is no intention on anybody's behalf to engage in deception, manipulation or evasion," he said.

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FULL TIMES ARTICLE HERE