(Adds U.S. military comments; al-Qaeda denial) BAGHDAD, Feb 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Friday it had no indication that the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, had been wounded or killed in a gun battle. An al Qaeda-backed Iraqi group, also denied in an Internet statement that al-Masri was hurt. The statement from the Islamic State in Iraq said the report was fabricated by the Iraqi government. An Iraqi Interior Ministry source said earlier Masri was wounded on Thursday when Iraqi forces intercepted a group of al Qaeda militants heading to a volatile town north of Baghdad. "We are pretty confident that Masri was not killed or wounded. In fact, we believe that Masri was not even involved in any kind of gun battle yesterday," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, said. Two Interior Ministry sources who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity declined to give details of Masri's whereabouts or say how security forces knew he had been wounded. They said an aide of Masri had been killed in the clash, which one of the sources said occurred on a road when the militants were travelling to the town of Samarra. Masri, believed to be an Egyptian, assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006. Masri is also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. The U.S. military has described him as a close Zarqawi associate who trained in Afghanistan and formed al Qaeda's first cell in Baghdad. Washington has put a $5 million bounty on Masri's head. (Reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia, editing by Samia Nakhoul)
