Suicide bombers en route to Iraq

A MILITANT Palestinian group that claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Israel said yesterday it had sent a first batch of its suicide bombers to Baghdad to fight invading US and British forces.

The al-Quds brigades of the Palestinian radical movement Islamic Jihad “regales our people with the news of the arrival of the first batch of its suicide attackers in Baghdad”, a statement said.

The statement said they would be fighting alongside Arab volunteers against “the new Mongols that are invading the capital of the Islamic caliphate”, in a reference to the 13th century sacking of Baghdad.

It followed an Islamic Jihad suicide attack in the Israeli town of Netanya yesterday which killed the bomber and injured 30 people, and which the group said was “a gift from Palestine to the heroic people of Iraq”.

“Iraq, we heed your call,” Islamic Jihad’s statement said. It added that “it is one war from Najaf to Tulkarem and from Jenin to Baghdad”, referring to Palestinian West Bank towns as well as the Iraqi cities.

Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shallah repeated on al-Jazeera that suicide bombers had reached the Iraqi capital, and called on others to “infiltrate Iraq and to Najaf to carry out attacks on the American occupation forces”.

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said on Saturday thousands of Arab volunteers were flowing into the country to help Baghdad fight the war launched by the US and Britain 11 days ago.

Iraqi army spokesman General Hazem al-Rawi followed that up with a statement that more than 4,000 volunteers had come from across the Arab world, ready to follow in the footsteps of the Iraqi

officer who killed four US soldiers in a suicide attack on Saturday.

Al-Jazeera said yesterday that an unknown number of Syrians had arrived in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to fight.

General Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in the Gulf, said yesterday he found it remarkable that Iraqi authorities would take credit for Saturday’s suicide car-bombing. Addressing reporters in Qatar, he said that US troops operating in Iraq would from now on exercise caution, notably in approaching civilian vehicles.

Meanwhile, a man in civilian clothes drove a pick-up truck into a group of soldiers on a United States military base in Kuwait yesterday, injuring about six people.

Earlier reports suggested that between 10 and 15 were injured in the attack at the desert base of Camp Udairi. A US military official said the soldiers were standing outside a store at the Camp Udairi in the Kuwait desert.