The killing in a U.S. air raid of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be the top leader of the al-Qaida group in Iraq, has drawn mixed reactions in the Egyptian capital Cairo, the Egyptian Gazette reported on Friday.

Al-Zarqawi, the most wanted insurgent in Iraq, was killed along with seven of his top aides in their safe house in Hibhib, about 40 km northeast of Baghdad, Wednesday evening.

"Thank God," the daily quoted Mansur Atta, a middle-aged civil servant, as saying.

Atta did not want to give the impression that he approved of what U.S. troops were doing in Iraq, but he was grieved when he saw the beheading of innocent foreign workers by al-Zarqawi and his associates, according to the report.

"They say al-Zarqawi fuelled tensions between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites," Atta said.

Minibus driver Mahmoud Hassan, however, said that al-Zarqawi resisted American forces, "Now the Americans can swallow Iraq and take its oil."

Many Egyptians do not think that al-Zarqawi's death would mean resistance against the U.S. occupation of Iraq would be weakened.

Mohamed Habib, deputy supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, said the problem with the Americans is that they always glorify the individual.

Habib said it was "totally wrong" to think that al-Qaida will disintegrate in Iraq by killing al-Zarqawi.

Habib believed that al-Zarqawi's successor was in place and known to everyone of the group.

"The appointment of a successor is an important Islamic principle in view of the belief that nothing is eternal," Habib said.

Emad Gad, an Egyptian strategic expert, believed that al- Zarqawi's death would weaken his followers' morale anyway.

"The precision with which the leader of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia was killed may lead one to believe that the Americans can kill the remaining members of al-Zarqawi's group and this would weaken morale further," Gad said.

The announcement of al-Zarqawi's death came six days after al- Zarqawi called on his followers in an audio tape to launch a war against Shiites in Iraq.

Sectarian violence between Shiite and Sunni communities has swept the country following the bombing of one of the most revered Shiite shrines in Samarra in April.

Source: Xinhua