Baghdad: Iraqi officials said police today arrested a man suspected of being the top leader of al-Qaida fighters in Mosul, who they said had fled the city in the face of an Iraqi security crackdown aimed at rooting out the terror network.

The US military said it was looking into the report. Reports of high-level al-Qaida arrests in the past have sometimes proven incorrect.

Maj Gen Ahmed Taha, of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, identified the detainee as al-Qaida in Iraq's "wali" or "governor" in Mosul, which would make him the terror network's top figure in the city and the Ninevah province where it is located.

A security official involved in the detention said the suspect, Abdul-Khaliq al-Sabawi, admitted in questioning to being the Mosul wali.

Al-Sabawi, a former brigadier in Saddam Hussein s military, fled Mosul before the crackdown was launched more than a week ago and took refuge in the Sunni Arab city of Tikrit, 200 km (120 miles) to the south, the official said.

Confessions given up by other militants captured in Mosul during the sweep led security forces to his hiding place in Tikrit, and he was brought back to Mosul for interrogation, he said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the arrest.

Taha said al-Sabawi was arrested in Salahuddin province, where Tikrit is the capital.

Some of Mosul's al-Qaida figures, particularly its top leaders, are believed to have fled or stayed out of the city before the sweep the latest in a series of high-profile operations launched by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to break the hold of armed groups in several areas around the country in the past two months.

Source : PTI