Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, was huddled in a grey breezeblock house on Wednesday with his spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman, and five others.

He was certain that no one would find him in this village, with its single road and groves of date palms. Its residents had long resented the US-led coalition forces. He had no idea that he had been betrayed; that the Americans and their allies had penetrated his al-Qaeda network and courted rival insurgent groups.

Thousands of miles away in Washington, President Bush was sitting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, meeting a group of congressmen recently returned from Iraq. One, Ray LaHood, a Republican, suggested that “things would be better if somebody would get al-Zarqawi”.

There was some snickering at his suggestion, but then Stephen Hadley, the National Security Adviser, left the room to answer a phone call.

What he learnt from the US Ambassador in Baghdad was that there had been an airstrike near Baquba.

At 6.15pm Iraqi time on Wednesday, two US Air Force F16s roared over al-Zarqawi’s nondescript safe-house and dropped a pair of 500lb (226kg) bombs that could yet mark a turning point in Iraq’s wretched recent history.

The US military yesterday released a black-and-white video showing smoke billowing from the ruins as the man responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq was killed.

Local police arrived at the scene, followed by US forces. They trawled the smouldering debris of metal pipes, a child’s stuffed rabbit doll, an infant’s shoes, blue dishes, a yellow prayer mat and blankets to find the bloodied remains of al-Zarqawi. They also found the remains of his six companions, including Abdul Rahman, a woman and child.

At a press conference yesterday, the US military showed a picture of al-Zarqawi’s body to prove that their nemesis, who had pulled off so many Houdini-like escapes in the past, was finally dead.

At the end of 2004, al-Zarqawi was detained by police who let him go, not realising his identity. In a second incident he fled from a car near a US checkpoint outside the rebel stronghold of Ramadi.

The last picture of al-Zarqawi revealed a swollen face, closed eyes, a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, bruised cheeks and streaks of blood beneath his skull. His body was taken away to a secure location and identified by fingerprints and facial identification.

The area around Hibhib, near Baquba, had seen a spike in violence in the days before al-Zarqawi’s killing, including the discovery of nine severed heads in fruit boxes and the killing of 21 Shias, many of them students, pulled off a bus and shot. It was probably no coincidence.

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