Phantom Zarqawi gets bolder in Iraq

Every day, US warplanes pound his suspected bases in Falluja. His face is known to many Iraqis from television footage and wanted posters.

But elusive Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi continues launching spectacular attacks. His suicide bombers have now hit Baghdad's Green Zone - the centre of the interim government and US forces in Iraq - for the first time.

Penetrating Iraq's most heavily fortified area, they killed five people last week, sending a chilling message to US and British diplomats who thought they were safe inside the fortress-like compound on the west bank of the Tigris.

The United States' enemy number one in Iraq keeps running circles around thousands of troops despite a massive manhunt, air strikes and a $25 million bounty on his head.

To judge by that reward alone, the United States wants Mr Zarqawi as badly as al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself.

If there is one person in Iraq who can undermine the interim government's elections scheduled for January, it is Zarqawi.

Combining fiery calls for holy war with the organisational skills of a detached surgeon, he seems to strike at will to the dismay of US military commanders.

The Green Zone attacks required patient planning to move the bombers and their explosives past several tough checkpoints. Perhaps it was an inside job in a country where police have sometimes joined forces with insurgents.

Little is known about Zarqawi apart from his rise from prison thug to master of terror in Iraq. US and Iraqi officials portray him as a ruthless militant leader who is willing to kill thousands for his aims.

But those who know Zarqawi suggest it took more than a fearsome reputation to elevate him to someone who evades the world's mightiest army.

A Jordanian guard at the Iraqi embassy in Amman - the type of official place Zarqawi blows up - remembers him as a charismatic figure who commanded respect in prison.

"He used to lift weights and exercise. He was seen as a disciplined, strong man. People listened to him," said the guard, who worked in the prison where Zarqawi was held.

"I love Abu Musab." Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group have appeared in images on the internet standing behind their hostages before they are executed. When an Islamist website showed a video in May of a man severing the head of American hostage Nicholas Berg, it said Zarqawi was the one wielding the knife.

The CIA said it was Zarqawi who read out the spine-chilling statement which accompanied the beheading of US hostage Eugene Armstrong in September.

The interim government and its US allies insist Zarqawi and his followers from across the Arab world plan their attacks from the rebel-held western city of Falluja.

But US air strikes on Falluja often leave piles of rubble, dead civilians and furious Iraqis who accuse the Americans of creating the Zarqawi bogeyman to keep their forces in Iraq.

Zarqawi, a man with a string of aliases who spent years in the lawless wastes of western Pakistan and Afghanistan, is likely to keep the Americans guessing.

They have few clues about him, except a string of attacks, including the August 2003 bombings of the UN Baghdad headquarters and a Shi'ite shrine in Najaf as well as suicide car bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis.

Despite the daily threat of air strikes, Zarqawi has managed to keep morale high among his fighters.