AMMAN, Jordan – Jordan provided the U.S. military with information that helped in tracking down and killing Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian official said.
Some of the information came from Jordan's sources inside Iraq and led the U.S. military to the area of Baqouba, the region northeast of Baghdad where Iraq's prime minister said Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike Wednesday night, said the official, who has knowledge of the operation.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was addressing intelligence issues, would not elaborate, but Jordan is known to have intelligence agents operating in Iraq to hunt down Islamic militants.
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Jordan also analyzed a video issued by the Jordanian-born Zarqawi in April and helped pinpoint where it was filmed, the official said. The video showed images of Zarqawi standing in a desert landscape, firing a machine gun.
The official did not give details about how discovering the location led the military to Zarqawi or whether the video was filmed in the same location where Zarqawi was killed. When the video came out, observers said the flat desert setting resembled parts of Iraq's Anbar province, to the west of Diyala province, where Baqouba is located.
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