Drone Strike Said to Kill at Least 8 in PakistanBy PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

In 2005, AQI largely focused on executing high-profile and coordinated suicide attacks, claiming responsibility for numerous attacks which were primarily aimed at Iraqi civilians. The group launched attacks against voters during the Iraqi legislative election in January, a combined suicide and conventional attack on the Abu Ghraib prison in April, and the coordinated suicide attacks outside the Sheraton Ishtar and Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in October.<20> In July, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and execution of Ihab Al-Sherif, Egypt's envoy to Iraq.<36><37> A July 2005 three-day series of suicide attacks, including the Musayyib marketplace bombing, left at least 150 people dead.<38> Al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the September single-day series of more than a dozen bombings in Baghdad, including a September 14 bomb attack, which killed about 160 people (mostly unemployed Shi'ite workers).<39> They claimed responsibility for series of mosque bombings which killed at least 74 people the same month in Khanaqin.<40>

The attacks blamed on or claimed by al-Qaeda in Iraq continued to increase in 2006 (see also the list of major insurgent attacks in Iraq).<23> In one of the incidents, two U.S. soldiers (Thomas Lowell Tucker and Kristian Menchaca) were captured, tortured and beheaded by the ISI; in another, four Russian embassy officials were abducted and subsequently executed. Iraq's al-Qaeda and its umbrella groups were blamed for multiple attacks targeting the country's Shia Muslim population, some of which AQI claimed responsibility for. The U.S. claimed the group was at least one of the forces behind the wave of chlorine bombings in Iraq which affected hundreds of people (albeit with few fatalities) through the series of crude chemical warfare attacks between late 2006 and mid-2007.<41> During 2006, several key members of the AQI were killed or captured by American and allied forces; this included al-Zarqawi himself, killed on June 7, 2006, his spiritual adviser Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, and the alleged "number two" deputy leader, Hamid Juma Faris Jouri al-Saeedi. The group's leadership was then assumed by the man called Abu Hamza al-Muhajir,<42> who was really the Egyptian militant Abu Ayyub al-Masri.<43>

The high-profile attacks linked to the group continued through early 2007, as the AQI-led Islamic State claimed responsibility for attacks such as the March assassination attempt on Sunni Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Salam al-Zaubai, the April Iraqi Parliament bombing, and the May capture and subsequent execution of three American soldiers. Also in May, ISI leader al-Baghdadi was declared to have been killed in Baghdad, but his death was later denied by the insurgents (later, al-Baghdadi was even declared by the U.S. to be non-existent). There were conflicting reports regarding the fate of al-Masri. From March to August, coalition forces fought the Battle of Baqubah as part of the largely successful attempts to wrest the Diyala Governorate from AQI-aligned forces. Through 2007, the majority of the suicide bombings targeting civilians in Iraq were routinely identified by the military and government sources as being the responsibility of al-Qaeda and its associated groups, even when there was no claim of responsibility (as was in the case of the 2007 Yazidi communities bombings, which killed some 800 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in Iraq to date).