Years of searching ended with a tip, a trail, airstrikes

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The two F-16 fighter jets had been circling above a remote area west of Baqouba for more than four hours Wednesday evening when the order came for them to lock their weapons onto a small house in the village of Hibhib. The pilots didn't know who was inside, but U.S. commanders were certain that they did: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq.

The commanders ordered the planes to attack. It was 6:15 p.m., officials said. One of the planes dropped a GBU-12 laser-guided bomb, a precision weapon carrying 500 pounds of explosives that in the Persian Gulf War won a reputation for hitting its target 88 percent of the time. The house went up in a cloud of dust — its final moments captured by the fighter jet's camera.

Just to be sure, commanders ordered a second strike, and the same plane dropped a second bomb, a 500-pound GBU-38, a weapon that got its first use in combat in 2004 during another effort to kill al-Zarqawi.

Two minutes later, according to the time stamp on a photo that American officials displayed Thursday, U.S. officials photographed al-Zarqawi's lifeless head.

Thus ended the hunt for a man who had killed hundreds of Iraqis, beheaded a Pennsylvania businessman in a video that horrified the world and whose name had become synonymous with a savage level of violence in Iraq. He died in much the same way as many of his hundreds of victims — in a massive explosion that left him lying in a pool of blood.

The cost of the munitions that ended his life, according to descriptions of the weapons: less than $40,000 combined.

It was unclear whether a $25 million reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi's death or capture would be paid; Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told CNN that the information on al-Zarqawi came from captured al-Qaida in Iraq sympathizers questioned by Americans. But Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Iraqi television that the reward would be honored.

Also dead in the house: a man U.S. officials described as al-Zarqawi's spiritual adviser; a woman thought to be al-Zarqawi's wife; and a boy thought to be his son. Three others also died. U.S. officials didn't identify them publicly Thursday.

More details are sure to emerge in the coming days about how Americans tracked al-Zarqawi in his last days, finally ending his reign of terror after several attempts. Officials guarded many details Thursday.

They wouldn't say, for example, whether a U.S. team had been on the ground watching the house to be sure al-Zarqawi was inside. They wouldn't explain how al-Zarqawi could be photographed so soon after the bombs had dropped.

They did say that al-Zarqawi's adviser and purported right-hand man, Sheik Abdul Rahman, had unintentionally led U.S. forces to the house.

According to an Iraqi Army official in Baqouba, a U.S. Special Forces team assigned to track al-Zarqawi arrived Wednesday in the Diyala province village of Arab Shoka, six miles northwest of Baqouba, and sought the assistance of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers stationed in the area northeast of Baghdad. The intelligence official said that the force raided several houses in the town and in nearby Hibhib prior to the bombing that killed al-Zarqawi.

"The reason was to trick Zarqawi and make him think that they were not coming after him so that he wouldn't leave the place," the official said.

The house was a good hiding place, the official said, isolated on a date-palm farm and sitting near a single road that was the only way to reach it.

One U.S. official said Rahman was followed Wednesday by an unmanned aerial vehicle, a Predator drone, until he entered the house. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. military official in Iraq, gave the order to strike the house.

A Jordanian official said that kingdom also gave the U.S. military information on tracking down al-Zarqawi, who had claimed responsibility for the triple suicide bombing at hotels in Jordan's capital, Amman, which killed 60 people.

And Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari suggested al-Zarqawi himself had slipped up in a recent bid to gain publicity, saying Iraqi officials "pinpointed" al-Zarqawi's location in a late April videotape.

But some of the key information appears to have come from a senior leader in al-Zarqawi's terror network who pointed U.S. officials toward the importance of Rahman. "This gentleman was key to our success in finding Zarqawi," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said of the spiritual adviser.

Eventually, U.S. officials were able to start tracking Rahman, monitoring his movements and figuring out when and where he would see al-Zarqawi. When U.S. forces knew the adviser would be linking up with al-Zarqawi Wednesday night, they decided to strike.

Al-Zarqawi's body was taken to a secure location. He was identified by his face, scars and tattoos. Those details were gleaned from Jordanian prison records from when the Jordanian national did time for plotting against his government.

Shortly afterward, U.S. officials conducted 17 raids around Baghdad and collected a "treasure-trove" of information, Caldwell said.

Al-Zarqawi's presence in Diyala province had become frighteningly obvious to many in Iraq recently.

Violence there had surged. Last week, a dozen decapitated heads had been discovered in fruit carts. Travelers were killed at makeshift checkpoints by assailants who tried to weed out and spare the Sunnis.

Diyala, it turned out, was a difficult place to hide. While Anbar offers protection with its vast area of desert and homogenous Sunni population, Diyala is largely dense farmland and home to many different sects and ethnicities.

Iraqis had been expecting al-Maliki to make a major announcement Thursday, but nothing as big as al-Zarqawi's death. Al-Maliki was expected to finally name the backbone of his government: the new ministers of defense, interior and national security.

When the prime minister walked into his news conference, he looked tired.

Minutes before he arrived, Iraqi officials had placed an American flag opposite the Iraqi flag on the podium, unusual for an announcement about internal Iraqi politics.

Even more unusual, al-Maliki entered the room flanked by Casey and Khalilzad.

"Zarqawi has been terminated," al-Maliki said. The room of reporters erupted into applause.

Then al-Maliki, usually stern-faced and joyless, did something few had seen him do in the month since he was named prime minister: He cracked a small smile.

It was by far the best-news day in Iraq in months — a boost for al-Maliki, and for a U.S. president and a mission badly in need of a lift.

Yet it took hours for that news to filter back to the White House — so long that President Bush was still talking about the need to get al-Zarqawi long after he was dead.

When Bush met at the White House on Wednesday with members of Congress who recently visited Iraq, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., concluded his report with a seemingly obvious suggestion — it would really help if the United States could get rid of al-Zarqawi.

"You're right," the president replied, according to LaHood — neither man knowing LaHood's prescription for success had already been accomplished some six hours earlier.

One person among the luminaries may have had an inkling that LaHood's request might have just been filled. LaHood said he noticed that national security adviser Stephen Hadley appeared preoccupied and was rushing in and out of the room, checking his BlackBerry and cellphone.

It was only after the meeting, back in the Oval Office at 4:35 p.m., that Hadley told Bush two pieces of good news: The Iraqis had finally picked defense and interior ministers, and U.S. forces believed they had gotten al-Zarqawi.

"That would be a good thing," Bush said to those gathered, according to his press secretary, Tony Snow.

Bush was notified about 9:20 p.m. that al-Zarqawi had been positively identified — but the White House held off on announcing the news Wednesday night, it said, to allow al-Maliki to announce it Thursday morning.

Information from Newsday, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune is included in this report.