US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said the militant, an Iraqi Kurd, was arrested on August 19 and is a "bombmaker suspected of orchestrating some of the most horrific bomb attacks" in Iraq.

Caldwell said he is considered an "explosive expert producing suicide vests, improvised-explosive-devices and detonation devices and is known to have facilitated the movement of high level leaders of Al-Qaeda in Iraq."

He said the captured individual was also close to the Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who allegedly took charged of Al-Qaeda's Iraqi subsididary following the June 7 death of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

During the operation, five suspected "terrorists" were killed and another five detained, he told reporters.

"Intelligence does indicate that the captured terrorist was also involved in the bombing of a Kurdish political party headquarters in Mosul on August 15," Caldwell said, referring to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

On August 15 a truck bomber detonated his load of explosives near the PUK office and killed eight Kurdish peshmerga militiamen and wounded 51 others.

Caldwell said in a series of operations against the Al-Qaeda network in the month of August, US forces conducted "140 assaults, killed 17 individuals, wounded five and detained 300 suspects."