AMERICAN soldiers have sealed off the restive city of Ramadi in western Iraq after troops raided its hospital in search of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The raid came after an apparent intelligence report that Iraq’s leading terrorist may be ill.

Residents of the violent Sunni Triangle city, 70 miles west of Baghdad, told The Times that US forces were reinforcing their positions around the city, prohibiting vehicles from entering and allowing passage only by foot through a single checkpoint. The nightly curfew has been brought forward from 10pm to 8pm.

The measures have prompted speculation that US troops are preparing an operation to hunt down al-Zarqawi and other insurgents. “It seems like it’s going to be another Fallujah,” one worried resident said, referring to the US assault on the nearby city last year.

Samir al-Obeidi, an administrator at Ramadi’s hospital, said that American troops and Iraqi National Guardsmen raided the hospital on April 28, terrifying patients. “They came after the curfew without prior notice. They started searching all the wards, for men and women. Lots of people were horrified. They didn’t know what was happening,” he said.

“They kicked in any of the doors in the staff accommodation that were locked. We asked what they were looking for and they finally answered, ‘Zarqawi’. ” A US defence official in Washington said that the military had been alerted to possible terrorist activities related to al-Zarqawi in and around the hospital. No one was detained in the raid, he said.

On February 20, US troops narrowly missed capturing al-Zarqawi during a car chase on a desert road near Ramadi.

Al-Zarqawi apparently escaped on foot but the soldiers seized his laptop computer, his driver and one of his lieutenants. The laptop was said to contain information about his health as well as intelligence about his network.

Since then US troops have mounted several raids on al-Zarqawi’s suspected hideouts, including one in the village of Madain, south of Baghdad, in which three men allegedly linked to the murder of Margaret Hassan, the British aid worker, were detained.

Iraqi officials said two days ago that another raid in the neighbouring town of Salman Pak — which had been under guerrilla control until last month — netted 20 terrorist suspects and vital intelligence.

After last week’s raid on the Ramadi hospital The Washington Post reported that al-Zarqawi’s network, the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Land Between the Two Rivers, had posted a statement at two local mosques saying that he had been at the hospital but escaped capture.

Al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million (£13 million) bounty on his head, is the Jordanian terrorist mastermind anointed by Osama bin Laden as his emir in Iraq.

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