A man suspected of being the head of the Iraqi al-Qaeda wing was reportedly captured by the Iraqi soldiers operating in the northern city of Mosul, officials confirmed on Friday.

The Iraqi troops first captured an associated of the terrorist leader. The associate told them they would find Abu Ayyub al-Masri sleeping in a house in the town of Mosul and showed them the way, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf.

"When police entered the house, they found him asleep. There is no doubt that the person arrested is Masri," Duraid Kashmula, the governor of Nineveh province in which Mosul is located, told Reuters.

If it’s the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq the soldiers captured, it would be a heavy blow to the Sunni Islamist terrorist group which had already suffered serious hits after several U.S.-led assaults.

However, the U.S. had no confirmation that the man captured was al-Masri. According to an Iraqi official who spoke in conditions of anonymity, the man captured was Iraqi and not Egyptian (as al-Masri is). He added that the soldiers found him sleeping inside the house. He had with him a gun and some religious books.

After being seized by Iraqi soldiers, the man confessed he was the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri took command of al-Qaeda operations in Iraq after the former leader of the terrorist group - Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006.

Al-Masri was a close associate of Zarqawi and has a U.S. bounty of $5 million on his head.