Skipping through what we already know about yesterday’s attack in Fallujah ...
Despite the hint that trouble was imminent, residents said there was little evidence of American support on the ground yesterday. Although US warplanes circled overhead, dropping heat balloons to divert heat-seeking missiles in the aftermath of the attacks, no US troops appeared on the streets and eyewitnesses said the attackers went largely unchallenged. "Fallujah is out of control," said one resident, Bilal Mukhlif, as he quickly brought down the shutters on his tyre shop two blocks away. Another shopowner said that he and his neighbours had been told not to open for business that morning because an ambush was imminent.
Qais Jameel, a wounded policeman, said that he had heard some of the attackers speaking a foreign language. From his hospital bed, the sheets soaked in his blood, he said: "It sounded like gibberish to me. It wasn’t Arabic."
Urdu? Farsi? Kurdish?
| Farsi, according to the subsequent post... |
Coalition officials have already blamed foreign fighters for many of the guerrilla attacks. Yesterday’s raid came as the Telegraph learned of suspicions that a high-ranking al-Qaeda member, Saif al-Adel, is operating in Iraq.
I thought he was "in custody" over in Iran.
| "House arrest," no doubt. Iraq's his back yard. |
Al-Adel, a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden and number three in the terror group’s chain of command, is believed to be among a group of senior al-Qaeda members who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq last September to wage jihad, or holy war, against American forces. An informant in Pakistan with close links to senior al-Qaeda and Taliban members said al-Adel, an Egyptian, planned to team up with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian linked to a string of major terrorist attacks in Iraq over the last few months.
| Another Zarqawi tie to al-Qaeda, not that we need any more at this point... |
They are even keener to capture al-Adel, who has a $25 million (£13.5 million) bounty on his head for information leading to his capture. He is believed to have played an important role in the US embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, and in more recent terrorist attacks within Saudi Arabia. The al-Qaeda informant said: "After an assembly of top al-Qaeda people was held, Saif al-Adel was ordered to reorganise the Iraqi resistance against the Americans and foreign invader troops in Iraq, and turn it into a holy war. Some top al-Qaeda members moved from Afghanistan to Iraq through Iran. Right now Zarqawi and Saif al-Adel are working together, trying to lead the resistance and attacks in Iraq." Coalition officials say that recent intelligence, as well as information from captured Iraqis, points to stronger links between insurgents and the al-Qaeda network but there is no evidence linking the suicide bombings to al-Qaeda.
Kind of hard, seeing as how the evidence goes up in smoke with the boomer, though I thought the Zarqawi letter said he’d ordered 25 suicide bombings, which I think accounts for all the ones that we’ve had to date.
Nonetheless, the possibility that two men at the top of the US most-wanted list are now working together on the ground is certain to alarm the authorities. Yesterday’s raid revealed the vulnerability of the Iraqi police and defence units whom the Americans want to assume security duties after the transfer of power. |