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Zarqawi aide requests permission to attack the US, Vatican
The deputy to Al Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, has asked for orders to attack the White House and the Vatican, according to an audiotape posted on the Internet yesterday. "To our emir (leader) Abu Musab Al Zarqawi ... we say: We are ready for your orders. We are determined to fight the infidels," said Sheikh Abdulrahman Al Iraqi in the tape, whose authenticity could not be verified. "If you point at the White House or the Vatican, we would make every effort so that you reach your target," he added, in the online statement broadcast a day after a call by Zarqawi to his followers to intensify their fight against the Americans in Iraq. This is the first time that Al Qaeda, the terror group led by Osama bin Laden, mentions the Vatican as a possible target.Meanwhile, at least six people were killed and 30 wounded in four separate car bombings in Iraq yesterday, three of them targeting army patrols. In one attack, a suicide driver ploughed into a joint Iraqi-US military convoy, killing two civilians and wounding six, an Interior Ministry official said. Police said four Iraqi soldiers were also wounded. The attack near Maysalun Square came a day after two other car bombs targeted the same eastern Baghdad district, part of a wave of explosions that caused havoc in the greater Baghdad area on Thursday. The group of Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attack in an Internet statement. A second car bomb, possibly set off by a suicide attacker, exploded at around 2:30pm outside a building where Sunni Arab politicians from the Council on National Dialogue were meeting, security officials said. One guard, sitting outside in a car, was killed, while 10 people, three of them guards, were wounded. The Sunni leaders escaped unharmed. The council was one of a number of moderate Sunni groups that took part in negotiations for the new cabinet line-up unveiled on Thursday, to the fury of insurgents and their hardline supporters among the ousted elite. A third car bomb, set off by a suicide attacker at about 6pm, targeted a US military convoy near Al Shaab stadium in the east of the capital, police said. It killed two civilians, wounded six and damaged four passing cars but the convoy escaped unscathed. In the main northern city of Mosul, a female passer-by was killed and four Iraqi commandos wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle as a police convoy passed, police and medical sources said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-05-01 |
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