BAGHDAD, June 15: Iraq said on Thursday Al Qaeda’s reign of terror was nearing its end, as the US military announced the killing of 104 rebels since the slaying of the group’s leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The mine of information from Al Qaeda documents seized during raids spelt the beginning of the end for the terror group, said Iraqi national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie

“We believe Al Qaeda in Iraq was taken by surprise; they did not anticipate how powerful the Iraqi security forces are and how the government is on the attack now,” Rubaie told reporters.

The documents had given Iraq an edge over Al Qaeda and will also give us the whereabouts of their network and their leaders and their weapons, and the way they lead the organisation and the whereabouts of their meetings. Rubaie said important documents had been seized from the rubble of Zarqawi’s safe house following its destruction in a US air strike on June 7.

Citing one of the documents, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office disclosed that Zarqawi aimed to try to widen the rift between the United States and Iran with kidnappings and assassinations involving US interests falsely attributed to Iran.

In what the government dubbed Zarqawi’s plan of death and destruction, he voiced doubt whether “America is truly an enemy of Iran because of the large support that Iran provided America in its wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The group also planned to carry out terrorist attacks in the West and then plant evidence at the sites implicating the Iranians, Maliki’s office said.

US officials later revealed that that particular document had been found a few weeks prior to Zarqawi’s death in a raid on an Al Qaeda safe house.

Iran and the US have had testy relations for decades, exacerbated in recent months over Iran’s uranium enrichment, which Tehran insists is for nuclear power and Washington claims could be used for bombs.—AFP