CAIRO, 7 July 2006 — The wife of slain Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi said she feared for her husband’s life and warned him to leave Iraq, but that he refused to “betray” his religion, according to a statement posted on the Internet yesterday.

The woman — who identified herself only as “Um Mohammed,” which means “mother of Mohammed” — said she advised Zarqawi to leave Iraq temporarily and give orders to his deputies from outside the country. The insurgent leader died June 7 in a US airstrike outside Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.

Zarqawi “gave me an angry look and said, ‘Me, me? I can’t betray my religion and get out of Iraq,’” his wife said.

“In the name of God, I will not leave Iraq until victory or martyrdom,” she quoted Zarqawi as saying.

In a message to Osama Bin Laden, she said her husband was “only one soldier in the ranks of your army, and there are so many soldiers.”

“As long as our Sheikh Osama — our leader and the one who makes infidels angry — as long as he is fine, our agony from the death of our leader Abu Musab is bearable,” the woman said in a statement posted on an Islamic website that frequently airs militant messages.

The woman identified herself by the same name as in an interview published Sunday in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, in which she said Al-Qaeda leaders sold out Zarqawi to the US in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Bin Laden. Yesterday’s Internet statement did not repeat the claims about the Al-Qaeda-US deal.

“The curse of Abu Musab will follow you, until you get devastated and slaughtered,” she said. “The biggest battle is coming.”