BAGHDAD, June 11: Al Qaeda in Iraq on Sunday warned of fresh attacks to avenge the killing of the group’s leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as US military doctors completed an autopsy on his body.

The United States military, meanwhile, dismissed as ‘ludicrous’ allegations from Iraqis published in two London newspapers that its troops had beaten Zarqawi to death following the initial air strike on his hideout on Wednesday.

An Internet statement from the militant group said: “The consultative council of the organisation of Al Qaeda in Iraq met immediately after the martyr’s death of the emir Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

It decided to “prepare, in coordination with the other components of the consultative council of the mujahideen, great operations that will shake the enemy”, the statement said.

It said the council also renewed its allegiance to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, “whose soldiers in Iraq will give him reason to rejoice.”

US General George Casey, head of coalition forces in Iraq, said his forces were ready for any attacks.

“I expect them to say what they said. I expect them to try and do what they said,” Gen Casey told the Fox News Sunday television program.

“I think what you’re going to see is an enhanced security operation here announced by the Prime Minister (Nuri al-Maliki) in Baghdad over the course of the coming week, and a tightening of security in the Baghdad area,” he said.

The US military confirmed on Sunday that the autopsy on Zarqawi’s body was complete and it was now awaiting the findings of the medical examination conducted by two doctors flown in from outside Iraq. The military was also awaiting the results of DNA tests on Zarqawi.

The Observer quoted one man as saying US soldiers pulled a man resembling Zarqawi from an ambulance where locals had placed him, wrapped his robe around his head and “battered him severely till he died”.

The Sunday Times cited labourer Ali Abbas as saying: “They (the US soldiers) were shouting and screaming and in a very tense and agitated mood.”

Abbas said the soldiers kicked the wounded man in the chest until he grew paler and began bleeding from his mouth before he died.—AFP