Shadowy Trail of al-Qaida in Iraq Leader

This photo released by the U.S. Military at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq Thursday, June 15, 2006, purports to show Abu Ayyub al-Masri who is the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Iraqi officials have received reports Tuesday May 1, 2007, that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was killed by Sunni tribesmen, but the chief government spokesman said Tuesday the information has not been confirmed. (AP Photo/U.S. Military) (AP)

Al-Masri also built a network of important and varied contacts.

Among his allies in Afghanistan were Rasul Sayyaf, an anti-communist mujahedeen who now serves in the Afghan parliament, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahedeen commander and former Afghan prime minister who now heads the militant faction Hezb-e-Islami.

But his most fateful meeting in Afghanistan would be with al-Zarqawi, who reportedly sent al-Masri to study advanced bomb-making techniques _ including the type of roadside explosives now striking U.S. forces in Iraq _ and used him to recruit new Arab fighters.

Another former mujahedeen commander, Mohammed Sharif, told the AP that he considered al-Masri a brilliant "military man."

"He was equal to 10 Afghans he was so brave," said Sharif, who first heard al-Masri call for jihad in the early 1990s.

The man who ran the former militant camp near Farm-e-Char said al-Masri was the mastermind of the 1993 ambush and killings of four U.N. workers in Nangarhar province. The aim, he said, was to drive Western organizations out of Afghanistan.

Farm-e-Char was closed soon after. Al-Masri relocated to Darunta, a sprawling training camp tucked in the hills on the outskirts of Jalalabad. Duranta was a key target of U.S. and British airstrikes in 2001 during the post-Sept. 11 attacks that toppled the Taliban and removed a safe haven for Islamic radicals.

"(Al-Masri) told us that jihad would not finish _ that Muslims should fight until there is freedom in Palestine and Kashmir and other Islamic countries," recalled an Afghan named Hashim, who attended al-Masri's lectures in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar and elsewhere.

"He was a good jihadi man and he would ask the students not to forget jihad and the poor Muslim nations that were waiting for our help for their freedom," added Hashim, who goes by one name, as is common in Afghanistan.

In April, the militant umbrella group Islamic State of Iraq posted a Web video calling al-Masri its "minister of war."

Al-Masri, who has a U.S. bounty of $1 million on his head, has made no public statement along with the announcement. But last year, he purportedly issued one of the most ominous declarations of the 4-year-old war.

An audio message _ claiming to be the voice of al-Masri _ was posted on a Web site that frequently carried al-Qaida messages and urged Islamic fighters to use Iraq to test "unconventional weapons" such as biological and so-called "dirty bombs" releasing radioactive material.

"We are in dire need of you," the message said.

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Associated Press reporters Kim Gamel in Baghdad and Sarah DiLorenzo and Lily Hindy in New York contributed to this report.