WASHINGTON (AP) - A mortally wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still alive and mumbling on a gurney when Iraqi police arrived at the site bombed by U.S. forces there, a top American military spokesman said Friday. Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, briefing military reporters at the Pentagon from his post in Baghdad, said he learned that al-Zarqawi was alive after getting briefings on the military operation that netted al- Zarqawi and several others.
"He mumbled something but it was indistinguishable and it was very short," Caldwell said.
The U.S. military earlier had displayed images of the battered face of al-Zarqawi and reported that he had been identified by fingerprints, tattoos and scars. Biological samples from his body also were delivered to an FBI crime laboratory in Virginia for DNA testing. The results were expected in three days.
Caldwell said Friday that authorities made a visual identification of al-Zarqawi upon arriving at the site of the airstrike.
He said that when the terrorist "attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher, everybody resecured him back onto the stretcher. ... He died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he'd received from this airstrike."
"We did in fact see him alive," Caldwell said. "There was some sort of movement he had on the stretcher and he did die a short time later. There was confirmation from the Iraqi police that he was found alive."
The story was first reported by Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends."
Al-Zarqawi, who had a $25 million bounty on his head, was killed at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday after an intense two-week hunt that U.S. officials said first led to the terror leader's spiritual adviser and then to him.
U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said at the time that the American airstrike targeted "an identified, isolated safe house." Four other people, including a woman and a child, were killed with al-Zarqawi and Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, the terrorist's spiritual consultant.
Caldwell said it was unclear whether al-Zarqawi was trying to get away as he writhed around on his stretcher.
Revising what military officials said Thursday, Caldwell said it now appears there was no child among those killed in the bombing. He cautioned that some facts were still being sorted out.
He said three women and three men, including al-Zarqawi, were killed.
