Iraqi security forces on Monday announced the arrest of Al-Qaeda's Baghdad military chief, who stands accused of planning attacks against the capital's hotels and embassies that have killed dozens.
Abbas Najem Abdullah al-Jawari, who went by the alias Abu Abdullah, was arrested on April 16, Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta told reporters at a news conference.
Atta added that Mohammed Nuri Matar Yassin al-Abadi, who was in charge of Al-Qaeda's assassination units in the capital, had also been captured.
"Iraqi security forces and intelligence cells tracking the Al-Qaeda leadership arrested two leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq," Atta told reporters at a news conference, referring to the name for Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq.
Jawari, 26, was arrested on April 16 and Abadi, whose nom de guerre was Abu Assad, was captured on May 1.
Atta said that Jawari, had been "involved in hundreds of terrorist crimes against civilians," and planned co-ordinated suicide car bomb attacks against Baghdad hotels in January and foreign embassies in April which killed 66 people in total.
Abadi, 32, headed Al-Qaeda's assassinations unit, Atta said, and had been involved in a variety of attacks, including the planned murder of an imam at a mosque in the predominantly Sunni Baghdad neighbourhood of Adhamiyah.
Last month, Al-Qaeda's political leader in Iraq Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and its self-styled "minister of war" Abu Ayub al-Masri were killed in a joint US-Iraqi operation.
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