BAGHDAD, Iraq — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could barely speak, but he struggled and tried to get away from American soldiers as he lay dying on a stretcher in the ruins of his hideout.
The U.S. forces recognized his face and knew they had the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Initially, the U.S. military had said al-Zarqawi was killed outright. But Friday new details emerged of his final moments.
For three years, al-Zarqawi orchestrated horrific acts of violence guided by his extremist vision of jihad, or holy war — first against the U.S. soldiers he considered occupiers of Arab lands, then against the Shiites he considered infidels.
On Wednesday, the U.S. military tracked him to a house northwest of Baghdad and blew it up with two 500-pound bombs.
A search of the destroyed safe house where the al-Qaida in Iraq leader was killed yielded documents and information storage devices that are being assessed for potential use against his followers, a military officer said Friday.
An M-16 rifle, grenades and AK-47 rifles also were found, according to the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because results from the search have not been announced. The U.S.-made M-16 was fitted with special optics.
They also found documents and unspecified "media," which the officer indicated normally means information storage devices such as computer hard drives and digital cameras or other data storage devices.
Flush with intelligence, the U.S. military has moved quickly to take advantage of the power vacuum left by al-Zarqawi's death, carrying out nearly 39 raids late Thursday and early Friday in an effort to stop his terror network from regrouping. Those were in addition to 17 raids carried out immediately after the terror leader was killed.
In Wednesday's airstrike, al-Zarqawi somehow managed to survive the impact of the bombs, weapons so powerful they tore a huge crater in the date palm forest where the house was nestled just outside the town of Baqouba.
Iraqi police reached the scene first, and found the 39-year-old al-Zarqawi alive.
"He mumbled something, but it was indistinguishable and it was very short," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said Friday of the Jordanian-born terrorist's last words.
Iraqi police pulled him from the flattened home and placed him on a makeshift stretcher. U.S. troops arrived, saw that al-Zarqawi was conscious and tried to provide medical treatment, the spokesman said.
"He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was the U.S. military," Caldwell told Pentagon reporters via videoconference from Baghdad.
Al-Zarqawi "attempted to, sort of, turn away off the stretcher," he said. "Everybody re-secured him back onto the stretcher, but he died almost immediately thereafter from the wounds he'd received from this airstrike."
So much blood covered al-Zarqawi's body that U.S. forces cleaned him up before taking photographs. "Despite the fact that this person actually had no regard for human life, we were not going to treat him in the same manner," Caldwell said.
In the raids Thursday and Friday, Caldwell said, at least 24 people had been detained and one person killed.
Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, a Shiite who was named to the key security post Thursday, said al-Zarqawi's death came after a painstaking effort to collect accurate data and investigate every clue.
"The killing of al-Zarqawi didn't occur by chance," al-Bolani told al-Arabiya TV. "His killing will raise the morale of the people as well as the morale of the security services."
At a Camp David news conference with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, President Bush said Friday the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "helps a lot" with security problems in Iraq but won't bring an end to the war. He also said it was unclear when Iraqi security forces could take control and let U.S. troops go home.
"I'm thrilled that Zarqawi was brought to justice," Bush said, squinting in the bright sunshine.
"Zarqawi's death helps a lot," the president said. "It's a big deal, but it's certainly not the end of conflict."
The death of Iraq's most feared terrorist was the subject of Friday's religious sermons in Iraq.
"The killing of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi does not mean the end of terrorism in Iraq," Shiite Sheik Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalai said in the southern city of Karbala. He called on the government to "kill all the symbols of terrorism and kill all of (al-Zarqawi's) associates to get rid of terrorism in our beloved country."
In a bid to prevent reprisal attacks, Iraqi authorities imposed a driving ban in Baghdad and Diyala province to the north, where al-Zarqawi and the others were killed.
It was a relatively quiet day in Baghdad, a day after at least five car bombs killed nearly 40 people and wounded dozens.
But a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing one person and wounding two, and three oil refinery workers were shot to death near Tikrit. Eight bullet-riddled bodies were found floating near Kut, and a firefight west of Baqouba killed five civilians and wounded three.
Whether the bloodshed continues depends in part on who succeeds al-Zarqawi and the new leader will continue killing Shiite civilians with the intention of sparking a civil war that pits Sunnis against Shiites.
Caldwell said Egyptian- born Abu Ayyub al-Masri — who was named in a most-wanted list issued in February 2005 by the U.S. command and has a $50,000 bounty on his head — would likely take the reins of al-Qaida in Iraq.
He said al-Masri and al-Zarqawi met for the first time at an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan in 2001, and al-Masri came to Iraq first. Al-Masri is believed to be an expert at making roadside bombs, the leading cause of U.S. military casualties in Iraq.
Al-Masri also has had "communications" with Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, Caldwell said.
Al-Zawahri praised al-Zarqawi in a videotape broadcast Friday but did not mention his death in a U.S. air strike, suggesting the tape was made earlier.
Contributing: Deb Riechmann of Associated Press