The US army confirmed that the al-Qaeda leader allegedly behind the bombing of al-Askari mosque in 2006 was killed during an airstrike in Samarra on August 2.

An air raid was launched against al-Qaeda members in Samarra on Tuesday by the US military, one of the leaders considered to have planned the February 22, 2006 attacks on the Shiite Golden Mosque was killed.

By his name, Haitham al-Badri was the authorities’ prime suspect in the bombings that brought Iraq on the verge of a bloody conflict fueled by sectarian enmity. Also, he is believed to have planned the kidnapping and killing of a media correspondent for Al-Arabiya network, Atwar Bahjat and her two colleagues that were covering the bombing.

The US military linked al-Badri only to this year’s bombings of the same mosque on June 13. Like the first attack, this bombing unleashed a fierce wave of violence. Shiite militias destroyed at least nine Sunni mosques and killed dozens of people in retaliation to the attack.

During Tuesday’s attack, the Iraqi security forces detained a number of militants in the same town located 125 kilometers north of Baghdad. Among them was reportedly al-Badri’s successor as commander of the local faction of al-Qaeda.

In other developments, Iraqi Interior Ministry informed that one of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s aids was gunned down in Najaf on Thursday. Sheikh Fadel al-Aql was killed by unknown perpetrators near his home in Najaf, 160 kilometers south of Baghdad.

Sistani is a Shiite cleric and one of the most important political figures in Iraq, gunmen trying to assassinate him in January, but their plan was foiled by security forces.