BAGHDAD, Sept 3: Baghdad announced the arrest of Al Qaeda in Iraq’s deputy leader on Sunday, accusing him of masterminding an attack on a revered Shia shrine that triggered a brutal wave of sectarian killings.

News of the arrest of Hamed Jumaa al-Saedi, an Iraqi, came as a row erupted over the use of the national flag in the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Saedi, an Iraqi, was “captured a few days ago along with a group of his loyalists after an operation was carried out by Iraqi security forces supported by US forces”, Iraq’s national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told reporters.

Rubaie said Saedi was the “number two leader after Abu Ayyub al-Masri” of the Al Qaeda network in Iraq.

Masri was appointed as the group’s Iraq commander after the June 7 slaying of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air strike near the restive provincial capital of Baquba, north of Baghdad.—AFP