Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is credited with pioneering the most gruesome tactics used by the Iraqi insurgency, such as beheadings of foreign hostages and suicide bombings. He and his followers are blamed for terrorist attacks including:

October 28, 2002

Laurence Foley, a diplomat and administrator of US aid programmes in Jordan, is gunned down outside his home in Amman. Wanted over the killing, al-Zarqawi flees his home country

August 19, 2003

A truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad kills 23, including top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. A dramatic strike at the heart of the coalition forces in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, which causes the UN to withdraw from Iraq

August 29, 2003

Al-Zarqawi starts the process of fomenting sectarian strife and civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq, with a car bomb in the Shia holy city of Najaf. The bomb kills more than 85 people, including Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim, the leader of the hard-line Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq

March 2, 2004

Coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives strike Shia Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing at least 181. US and Iraqi officials link the attacks to al-Zarqawi

May 11, 2004

A new low in the campaign of terror as a grisly video emerges showing the beheading of Nicholas Berg, a kidnapped American telecoms engineer. The voice of the man wielding the knife is later identified as al-Zarqawi’s

May 18, 2004

Another blow to the stability of the political process in Iraq, as a car bomb assassinates Abdel-Zahraa Othman, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, one of many Iraqi leaders murdered for 'collaborating' with Coalition forces and the interim government

September 14, 2004

Al-Zarqawi turns his attention to decimating the fledgling forces of law and order in Iraq. A car bomb rips through a busy market near a Baghdad police headquarters where unemployed Iraqi men are queuing to apply for jobs, killing 47. It is the first of many such attacks

September 16, 2004

Kenneth Bigley, an engineer from Liverpool, and his US colleagues Jack Hensley and Eugene "Jack" Armstrong are kidnapped in Baghdad. By October 10, 2004, all three men have been confirmed beheaded

October 30, 2004

The body of hostage Shosei Koda, 24, of Japan, is found decapitated in Baghdad, his body wrapped in an American flag

December 19, 2004

WIth characteristic ruthlessness, car bombs tear through a funeral procession in Najaf and the main bus station in nearby Karbala, killing at least 60 people in the Shia Muslim holy cities

February 28, 2005

A suicide car bomber strikes a crowd of police and Iraqi National Guard recruits in the southern city of Hillah, killing 125

November 9, 2005

Triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60 people. This may have been a terror attack too far for al-Zarqawi, as it causes a backlash of revulsion in the Arab world. There are reports in 2006 that his al-Qaeda masters wish to rein him in.

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