By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, June 11, 2006; A20

BAGHDAD, June 10 -- Mounted at the last minute by a single F-16 that was pulled away from refueling, the airstrike that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi stemmed from tracking a top aide of the guerrilla chief to a hideout whose location was unknown until shortly before the attack, a top U.S. military spokesman disclosed Saturday.

New details about the operation still were emerging three days after two 500-pound bombs ended the hunt for Iraq's most-wanted man at a remote farmhouse in palm groves west of the Iraqi city of Baqubah. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a military spokesman, said U.S. forces had not known until Wednesday where Zarqawi was. With no heavy concentration of troops in the area, Caldwell said, American commanders decided to try to kill Zarqawi with an airstrike rather than wait to muster a ground assault to capture him, and risk his escaping.

U.S. forces treated Zarqawi's hideout "as a time-sensitive target," Caldwell told reporters.

As Caldwell spoke, two U.S. military specialists flown in from the United States were performing an autopsy on Zarqawi's corpse. Caldwell said he hoped for some results to be made public as soon as Monday, and he repeated that Zarqawi had not suffered any gunshot wounds in the attack.

Caldwell sketched a rough timeline of the events before, during and after Wednesday's assault.

American military officials say the breakthrough in the case was the pinpointing in recent weeks of a Zarqawi aide, Sheik Abdel Rahman, whom they described as Zarqawi's spiritual adviser. A U.S. intelligence source late this week portrayed Abdel Rahman as Zarqawi's liaison to Sunni Arab clerics in Iraq, to whom Abdel Rahman turned for funding, recruits and support.

The capture last month of an Iraqi customs worker, Ziad Khalaf al-Kerbouly, by Jordanian intelligence officers led the Americans to Abdel Rahman, said the U.S. intelligence source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Kerbouly, who said on Jordanian television May 23 that he had used his job to help Zarqawi smuggle cash and materiel, gave Jordanian intelligence agents Abdel Rahman's name and contacts, the intelligence source said.

A top secret U.S. Special Operations unit, Task Force 77, located Abdel Rahman and kept him under surveillance, the source said.

Caldwell refused on Saturday to confirm any of the reports on the intelligence that led forces to Abdel Rahman and then Zarqawi. Americans "were using every intelligence asset we had available,'' he said, adding that the hit would not have been possible without U.S. coalition partners. He did not specify which partners.

Using those intelligence leads, Caldwell said, Americans had been able to track Abdel Rahman's whereabouts and doings for several weeks. Those watching Abdel Rahman had been tipped off that he always carried out certain actions before a liaison with Zarqawi, Caldwell said, and he went through those actions Wednesday.

"Rahman did certain things that would be an indication he would be having [a meeting] with Zarqawi," Caldwell said.

However, as the Americans tracked Abdel Rahman that day -- apparently by air surveillance and other means -- "we didn't know that would be the house he would be going to," Caldwell said.

Once Abdel Rahman arrived, Caldwell said, U.S. military officials were presented with what appeared to be their first clean shot of Zarqawi since the start of the war -- fixed in one spot for the time being, without large numbers of innocent civilians around him.

However, "we did not have actual physical ground troops in the area," Caldwell said.

Commanders decided to call in an airstrike, Caldwell said. They quickly located two Air Force F-16s within striking range, one engaged in refueling at the time, Caldwell said.

One F-16 was ordered to peel off for the mission.

"He left his wing man" and headed off as a "single ship" -- something "that is not done in the Air Force," Caldwell said, highlighting the immediacy of the mission.

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, was told by commanders just before the strike that Zarqawi's hideout was about to be hit, the spokesman said.

The F-16 hit at about 6:15 p.m., following instructions to drop two bombs, Caldwell said.

The strike killed three men, two women and a girl age 5 to 7, Caldwell said. U.S. officials previously had denied accounts from witnesses that a child died in the strike; Caldwell said he had been told only after his first press briefings that one of the dead was a girl.

Of the six victims, he said, authorities have identified only Zarqawi and Abdel Rahman.

Iraqi police, who have a station a few miles away, were the first on the scene, American and Iraqi officials say. By the time American forces arrived, the Iraqis had Zarqawi on a stretcher, Caldwell said.

A villager, Ahmed Mohammed, on Friday told The Washington Post and news agencies that American forces hit and kicked the gravely wounded Zarqawi when they arrived on the scene, demanding his name.

Caldwell gave a different account, saying that one of the first Americans on the scene tried to give first aid to Zarqawi as others sought to confirm his identity.

Caldwell declined Saturday to give more details about Zarqawi's wounds, saying it was better to wait for the autopsy reports.

Meanwhile on Saturday, roadside bombs in Baghdad killed nine people and wounded more than 40, the Associated Press reported. Gunmen also killed at least 13 people in sporadic violence nationwide.

The first blast targeted a police patrol at the al-Sadriya market, killing four people and wounding 27 but missing the patrol, police said. The market is in a mixed Shiite-Sunni Arab neighborhood in central Baghdad.

Hours later, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol in Karradah, a popular shopping area in downtown Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 14.

Caldwell also said U.S. forces in the western city of Ramadi had stepped up concentrated missions seeking specific targets there, but said no all-out operation was underway.

Ramadi is the capital of the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab province of Anbar, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said last week that parts of Anbar are under control of insurgents. While the U.S. military has suspended embeds there for Western journalists, some Arabic-language TV networks reported this week that a widely talked-of U.S. military operation in Anbar was underway.

Staff writer Barton Gellman in Washington contributed to this report.