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Suicide Bombings in Iraq Blamed on Group of Foreign Fighters
Ned Parker, Agence France Presse
BAGHDAD, 30 October 2003 — A core group of foreign fighters in Iraq are smuggling in suicide bombers from Arab countries to carry out attacks like Monday’s five bombings in Baghdad, according to senior coalition military and intelligence sources.
About 200-400 foreign fighters are currently estimated to be in Iraq, but they serve mainly as a nucleus, which plans, finances and undertakes logistics for the lethal operations, a military said.
The allegations came as US President George W. Bush fingered Saddam Hussein’s followers and “foreign terrorists” in Monday’s five suicide bombings in Baghdad, which killed 43 people and wounded at least 200 more. When it comes to the actual attacks, the plotters are recruiting their car bombers from hotbeds of anti-US sentiment and religious militancy, the officer said.
“The 200-400 are the operators and activists. They’re not the ones blowing themselves up. They’ll bring those guys who are willing to give up their lives,” he said.
Potential bombers and foot soldiers hail from the neighboring Arab countries and possibly as far a field as Chechnya, with arrangements being made to pay off the suicide bombers families, he said.
The one would-be bomber captured in Monday’s attacks was a Yemeni with a Syrian passport. The officer conceded the network’s guerrilla-style cells were elaborate enough that the bombers and foot soldiers would have no idea about who was really behind the attacks.
An intelligence officer investigating the bombings also said it was likely that the masterminds of the attack imported their suicide bombers in the countdown to Monday’s killing spree.
“We’re definitely looking at this very possibility. It’s probable,” he said.
He described the fighters as having “a very solid logistical support network” in place — a necessity to carry out the macabre feat of five suicide bombings in 45 minutes around the capital.
“It would take weeks or months to plan an attack like this. My guess would be months,” he said. “They needed to coordinate five attacks with five vehicles, find loads of explosives, rig the cars, hide the cars, finance the operations and pay the family of the suicide bombers.
“You need familiarity with the city of Baghdad. You need some safe houses, some places to work on the cars.”
But the intelligence officer did not discount the possibility the attack was planned in collaboration between the foreign fighters and Saddam’s followers.
“We’re looking very hard at whether foreign fighters are working alongside the Fedayeen I haven’t seen it, but we all expect that it’s happening here.”
Interim Governing Council member Samir Sumaidy, who sits on the body’s joint security committee with the Americans, also touts a degree of coordination between Saddam’s ousted Baath Party and foreigners. “The foreign fighters alone without local support would not be able to succeed,” he said.
But he said he believed the numbers of foreign fighters was far bigger than the American number of 200-to-400.
“Two hundred to 400 is a gross underestimate. I have people here who bring news of fighters from neighboring slipping inside the country,” Sumaidy said.
A military source described Monday the coalition as regularly picking up Arabs from places with a history of suicide bombings.
Ibrahim Junabi, an adviser to interim Interior Minister Nuri Badran, said he believed Saddam’s men were financing Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group or another batch of foreign operatives plotting and executing the attacks.
The senior military officer warned the next few weeks could see even greater bloodshed, with the militants, both foreign and locals, unleashing their full bag of tricks after biding their time upon the US troops arrival in Baghdad last April. “The problem here is six months on we’ve reached the turning point. In May and June, people were somewhat happy. Then in July, you had nine attacks per day and then in August it went to 15. Now they are even higher.
“Saddam sympathizers and the others have had time to disguise themselves and plan. Now they see this as their moment of opportunity.”
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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