The government said Thursday a security cordon of 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police will ring Baghdad starting next week in what it dubbed Operation Lightning, aimed at halting a spree of insurgent violence that has killed more than 620 people this month.
The interior minister, meanwhile, said his office believes militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was wounded, while an Internet statement claimed that Iraq's most feared terrorist group had appointed a deputy to fill in for the Jordanian.
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