The man captured Thursday in the northern city of Mosul is not the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, a senior US military official said on Friday, after several Iraqi officials announced that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, was captured.

The US military said there were “no operational reports” to confirm the announcement made by Iraqi officials. They captured another insurgent and this caused confusion.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the arrest occurred “at midnight and during the primary investigations he admitted that he is Abu Hamza Al-Muhajir,” according to the Associated Press.

The false alarm was preceded by other news, which were sources of confusion, such as the deaths or capture of other insurgents including al-Zarqawi before he was killed and Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, the highest ranking former member of Saddam Hussein's regime.

“U.S. intelligence officials have no information to confirm the report and at this point are skeptical of the reported capture,” a senior federal law enforcement official told CNN.

Some of al Qaeda most feared and notorious figures killed or captured in US missions were: Mohamed Atef, killed in a US air strike in Afghanistan in November 2001, Abu Laith al-Libi, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants, killed in a US missile strike, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air raid in June 2006, Muharib Abdul Latif al-Jubouri, an al-Qaeda figure accused of involvement in the kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll, in May 2007, killed by the US military.

The successor of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al Qaeda leader in Iraq, killed in a US air strike, has a US bounty of $5 million on his head.