May 8 (Reuters) - Iraqi and U.S. forces have detained a man suspected of being the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi security officials said on Friday.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said a regional security chief had told him the al Qaeda leader, an Egyptian called Abu Ayyab al-Masri but also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, had been detained.

"American forces have taken him to identify him," he said. The U.S. military said it had no immediate information. Masri assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006.

Here are some facts on him.

* In June 2006 a statement signed by al Qaeda said the shura council of al Qaeda in Iraq unanimously agreed Masri should succeed Zarqawi".

* 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. He had been on a previous list of 29 militants most wanted by the U.S. military.

* A pro-government newspaper published photographs of him on a poster. He was a thin figure with a goatee in a traditional Arab headdress in one photograph and wearing glasses and a green jacket in the other.

* In late June 2006, the United States put a $5 million bounty on Masri's head.

* In September, Al Arabiya television said Iraq's al Qaeda wing posted online a video of its new leader reading a statement before the killing of a Turkish hostage.

* The same month a man believed to be Masri called for the kidnapping of Westerners to swap for a Muslim cleric jailed in the United States and urged militants to step up their jihad, or holy war, during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

* In May 2007 Iraq's Interior Ministry said Masri had been killed but soon after al Qaeda released an audio tape purportedly from him.

* Last month Masri called for renewed attacks on American troops over the next month, the U.S. based terrorism monitoring service SITE Institute said, in an hour-long audio tape.

He called on al Qaeda fighters to provide "a head of an American as a present to the trickster Bush" in a month-long campaign he called the "attack of righteousness".

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