The US ambassador to Iraq said that Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's days were numbered as US forces kept up the hunt for Iraq's most wanted man following rumors he had been killed. "His days are numbered. He is going to be ultimately found," Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview with CNN.
"Either he will be brought to justice or he will die in the battle to capture him but we are getting closer to that goal every day. A lot of coalition forces and experts are working hard on this," he said.
"It is not a question of whether but when."
Iraqi and US troops were continuing to hunt for the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, who has a 25 million dollar US bounty on his head, after commanders dismissed reports that he had been killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
"We have no indication that Zarqawi was killed and we will continue operations to search for him," a US military spokesman told AFP in Baghdad.
In Beijing, where US President George W. Bush was wrapping up a visit, White House spokesman Trent Duffy described the reports of Zarqawi's death as "highly unlikely, not credible."
Media reports on Sunday said the Al-Qaeda frontman might have been among a group of insurgents killed in battle in Mosul on Saturday.
Zarqawi, who is behind some of the bloodiest attacks and kidnappings in Iraq, also claimed this month's deadly hotel bombings in his homeland of Jordan which killed 59 people.
Follower of an extreme form of Sunni Islam, the Al-Qaeda frontman has called for "all-out war" against Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.
When Iraqi President Jalal Talabani appealed for dialogue at a conference with Sunni political and religious leaders this week, an Internet statement posted in Zarqawi's name retorted that "sword and blood" were the only ways forward.
