Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (October 30, 1966 – June 7, 2006), born Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist militant who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and masterminding a series of bombings, beheadings, and other attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly turning an insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq into a Shia–Sunni civil war. He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of slaughtering".

He formed Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (JTJ) in 1999, and led it until his death in 2006. al-Zarqawi took responsibility, on several audio and video recordings, for numerous acts of violence in Iraq including suicide bombings and hostage executions. Al-Zarqawi opposed the presence of Western military forces in the Islamic world, as well as Western support for Israel. In 2004, he joined al-Qaeda, and pledged allegiance to its leader Osama bin Laden. After this, JTJ became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which al-Zarqawi was named emir of.

In 2005, he declared war on Shias in Iraq, after the Iraqi government offensive on insurgents in the Sunni town of Tal Afar. He dispatched numerous suicide bombers throughout Iraq to attack American soldiers and areas with large concentrations of Shia militias. He is also thought to be responsible for the 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan. Al-Zarqawi died in a targeted killing by a joint U.S. force in 2006, while attending a meeting in an isolated safehouse in Hibhib, Iraq.