Goodbye Abu Ayyub al-Masri, we hardly knew you!

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces killed the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Egyptian militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri, in the western Iraqi town of Haditha on Wednesday, a government source said on Thursday.

The source who declined to be identified told Reuters U.S. forces acted on a tip and launched an airstrike and ground assault that killed Masri and three of his aides.

Though he wasn’t as popular as his predecessor, al-Masri will be forever known for his last ditch effort to invent nuclear technology in one month.

*deletes my al-Masri Google Alert*

Update:Ah shoot, now military sources are denying that al-Masri was killed in today’s air raid.

“There was a raid where we thought he may have been among those killed. We are still doing DNA tests but we do not believe coalition forces have killed al-Masri,” U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson told Reuters.

*creates a new al-Masri Google Alert*

Update II:

Tests are being done on DNA taken from a slain militant to determine if he is al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, but the US military said it is “highly unlikely” that the terror chief had been killed.

A US military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, said that a number of al-Qaeda suspects were killed in a recent raid in western Anbar province and initially “we thought there was a possibility al-Masri was among them.”

“As we did further analysis, we determined that it was highly unlikely that he was killed,” Johnson said.

“We are doing DNA testing to completely eliminate the possibility that this would be al-Masri, but we do not believe it is,” he said.

Johnson would not say what kind of a DNA sample existed that tests of the body might be compared to, but said “we’re confident we will be make a positive ID, or not, when the time comes.”

The process “can take weeks to resolve,” Johnson said.