American soldiers in Iraq captured a person who is believed to be a close associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, described by some as "a key link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," a senior American official said in Washington on Friday.
U.S. troops captured Husam al-Yemeni Thursday, the official said, according to The AP. He is described by U.S. officials as a top member of the al-Qaeda linked Ansar al-Islam group and the leader of a resistance cell in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, David Kay, who has quit as head of a US search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said Friday he did not believe they existed, but the White House said the search would go on.
"I don't think (WMD) existed," Kay told Reuters. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties."
Bush ordered US-led forces to invade Iraq last March to oust Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi President, after accusing him of possessing chemical and biological arms and trying to build a nuclear weapon. No such arms have been found. (Albawaba.com)
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