BAGHDAD, Iraq — Security forces are closing in on the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a senior Iraqi official said yesterday, showing a captured video of the terror chief teaching followers how to build a car bomb.

The video, displayed to journalists, showed Abu Ayyub al-Masri — his face exposed — going through what appeared to be a storage bunker, pointing out different elements of a car bomb in what National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie called an instructional CD.

“In a very short time, we will bring you the good news of Abu Ayyub al-Masri either killed or handcuffed to be brought before the Iraqi justice system,” Mr. Rubaie said, then added, addressing Mr. Masri, “Your days are numbered, and you will face your fate very soon.”

The American military said yesterday that more than 20 terror suspects believed linked to Al Qaeda in Iraq had been killed or captured in raids in the past week in Baghdad and the nearby cities of Baqouba, Ramadi, and Samarra.

A woman and a girl died in a crossfire during a raid by Iraqi troops, backed by American advisers, early yesterday on a suspected militia member’s home in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi army, Iraqi security officials said. The militiaman, suspected of involvement in kidnap-slayings, was captured.

Men at the scene held up a color image of a smiling, winking Jesus giving a “thumbs up” sign that they said was left by troops at the raided house.The image, known as the “Buddy Christ,”is from the movie Dogma, a 1999 religious satire.

“We are poor people sitting in our house,” a woman dressed in black told Associated Press Television News in the aftermath of the raid. “We don’t harbor rancor against others.”

An American military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, said the photo was a “rather ridiculous attempt to discredit a raid conducted by Iraqi forces who captured a suspected murderer and kidnapper.”

A spokesman for the Iraqi army’s 6th Division in Baghdad, Major Salman Abdel-Wahid, said his soldiers could not have been responsible for the picture.

“Our soldiers do not carry out such acts,” he said.

The raid came a day after an unprecedented curfew in the Iraqi capital prompted by the arrest of an Al Qaeda suspect who the America military said was “in the final stages” of carrying out a string of bombings in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, the center of government.

The suspect, seized Friday night, was the bodyguard of a top Sunni Arab politician, Adnan Al-Dulaimi, a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front — the largest Sunni coalition in the 275-member parliament.

Baha el-Deen al-Araji, a Shiite lawmaker, accused Sunni politicians of having “direct and indirect links to Saddamists, Takfiris [Sunni radicals], and terrorists.”

He demanded a “significant cabinet reshuffle” to change “ministries of security and public services dossiers” — referring to the Defense Ministry and other posts held by Accordance Front supporters.

Mr. Dulaimi denied any connection to militants and accused critics of trying to harm national unity.

A lawmaker from Mr. Dulaimi’s party, Harith al-Obeidi, accused Shiites of trying to “defame the bloc because of our principled stances against the [Shiite] militias who are playing havoc throughout the country.”

With the end of the curfew yesterday morning, new violence killed at least 22 people in Baghdad and elsewhere — including the two who died in yesterday’s raid — and eight bodies were found, apparently the latest victims of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite death squads.