Zarqawi: Dead or Alive?

Nov. 21, 2005 — -- U.S. officials tell ABC News the heat is now on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as even his own tribe turns against him.

Following months of operations in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, soldiers of the U.S. Army's Stryker Brigade briefly thought they might have stumbled across Zarqawi.

Their hope was fueled by both the stiff resistance the soldiers met when they hit the suspected terror stronghold on Saturday and the fact that the three men inside blew themselves up rather than face being captured.

Although the results of DNA tests remain to be seen, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad today said, "We did not get him in Mosul."

U.S. officials tell ABC News the best intelligence shows Zarqawi to be operating in western Baghdad. He is being sought by the U.S. military's elite Task Force 145, which has reportedly come close to capturing him several times.

Since Zarqawi ordered the attack on a Muslim wedding in Jordan two weeks ago, officials say there has been a surge in the number of tips about his whereabouts.

According to Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and ABC News consultant, "More and more Arabs and Muslims are becoming vocal in their condemnation of Zarqawi's tactics."

Even Zarqawi's attempt last week to apologize or explain the attack on the wedding as a mistake did not seem to help.

"This may have been the straw that breaks the camel's back with regard to attacks on fellow members of Islam," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism official and now an ABC News consultant.

In fact, Zarqawi's own tribe disavowed him in an advertisement placed over the weekend in Jordanian newspapers in an apparent attempt to minimize the risk of becoming targets of revenge.

Aref Al-Khattar, a former Jordanian intelligence officials and now associate professor at the California University of Pennsylvania, said: "If somebody kills one of my relatives, the family has the right to go after that killer and take the justice by their hands."

ABC News' Maddy Sauer, Chris Isham and Hoda Osman contributed to this report.