A wounded army recruit is transferred to a hospital after a bomb attack occurred in Baghdad August 17, 2010.

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer

 
BAGHDAD – Young men from some of Iraq's poorest areas waited all night outside an army recruitment center, only to become easy prey Tuesday for a suicide bomber who killed 61 of them. Desperate for jobs, dazed survivors rushed to get back in line after the attack.

Officials quickly blamed al-Qaida for the deadliest single act of violence in the capital in months. Police said 125 people were wounded.

Bodies of bloodied young men, some still clutching job applications in their hands, were scattered on the ground outside the headquarters' gate. Soldiers collected bits of flesh and stray hands and legs as frantic Iraqis showed up to search for relatives.

The early morning bombing in central Baghdad starkly displayed Iraqi forces' failure to plug even the most obvious holes in their security two weeks before the formal end of the U.S. combat role in Iraq.

Army and police recruitment centers have been frequent targets for militants, underscoring the determination of the applicants to risk their lives for work in a country with an unemployment rate estimated as high as 30 percent.

"I have to get this job at any cost in order to feed my family," said Ali Ahmed, 34, a father of two who returned to the bloody street after taking a friend to the hospital. "I have no option but to come back to the line. If there were other job opportunities, I would not be here in the first place."

Ali Ibrahim, 21, who suffered minor shrapnel wounds in the blast, returned to the line after his release from the hospital.

"I came back with my friend to try to get in. We are forced to come back for the sake of earning a living by securing the job," said Ibrahim, who had been waiting since 3 a.m.

Yasir Ali, a 29-year-old recruit, washed blood off his body at a nearby police station and then went back to the line outside the Iraqi army's 11th Division headquarters and recruiting center.

The men waited in vain. The recruitment center was shut down after the attack, and the military said it would not reopen. Even so, some applicants remained there until mid-afternoon.

On the last of a nine-day recruitment drive, Iraqi officials provided only scant security for the estimated 1,000 men hoping to get hired, hundreds of whom had stayed outside the headquarters overnight for a first shot at handing in their job applications.

The recruits were from three poor Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and the impoverished Babil and Muthanna provinces in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south.

The suicide bomber sat patiently with them through dawn before launching his attack, Ali said.

Ali said he watched the bomber, whom he described as a young man, walk up to an Iraqi army officer and detonate the nail-packed explosives strapped to his legs about 7:30 a.m.

"Severed hands and legs were falling over me," Ali said. "I was soaked with blood from the body parts and wounded and dead people falling over and beside me."

The body of the suicide bomber was found with his legs blown off, said Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi.

Two police officials put the death toll at 61 with 125 others wounded. Officials at four Baghdad hospitals confirmed the body count. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Al-Moussawi said there were 39 killed and 57 wounded. Varying casualty counts are common in the confusion after attacks.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, a bomb attached to a fuel truck detonated in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Ur on Tuesday night, killing eight people, wounding 44 and causing a nearby gas station to catch fire, according to police and hospital officials. Military recruiting stations and security checkpoints continue to be easy targets for insurgents who have killed 454 soldiers, policemen and government-backed local militias so far this year, according to an Associated Press count.

The repeated bombings show that despite at least $22 billion in U.S. funding since 2004 for training and equipment, security forces are little better at protecting themselves than the population.

The looming departure of the U.S. military has turned Iraqi forces into even more attractive victims for insurgents looking to prove their might by exploiting security gaps.

The White House said the bombing will not halt either Iraq's transition to democracy or the U.S. troop withdrawal.

"There obviously are still people who want to derail the advances that the Iraqi people have made toward democracy," Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said. "But they are firmly on track."

Al-Moussawi said the Iraqi military would shut down all recruiting centers in urban areas. Although police protect their own recruits by having them wait inside fortified buildings and closing off nearby roads, al-Moussawi said that was not always possible for the army because of the sheer number of job applicants.

"We couldn't get another place for the recruits," al-Moussawi said — despite describing the dearth of protections as "a mistake."

"It was difficult to control the area because it's an open area and because of the large number of recruits," he said.

Despite the risks, many Iraqis are lured by the prospect of a steady paycheck to join the security forces. After years of war, there are few jobs to be had, leaving Iraq's estimated unemployment rate at between 15 and 30 percent.

Adding to Iraq's economic stress is the political uncertainty that has dragged on for more than five months, since March parliamentary elections failed to produce a clear winner. That has left competing political parties bickering over how to share power and whether to replace Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — instead of creating a stable government to rebuild industries and economic development.

"Factories are being closed and farms are being deserted, and nobody cares in the government," said Baghdad political analyst Hadi Jalo. "This situation has forced thousands of young people to risk their lives working in the security forces."



http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...7/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

 By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI

CAIRO – Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called for the creation of a new relief body to help Muslims in an audiotape released Friday, seeking to exploit discontent following this summer's devastating floods in Pakistan by depicting the region's governments as uncaring.

It was the third message in recent weeks from al-Qaida figures concerning the massive floods that affected around 20 million people in Pakistan, signaling a concentrated campaign by the terror group to tap into anger over the flooding to rally support.

But while the earlier messages by subordinates were angry, urging followers to rise up, bin Laden took a softer, even humanitarian tone — apparently trying to broaden al-Qaida's appeal by presenting his group as a problem-solving protector of the poor.

"What governments spend on relief work is secondary to what they spend on armies," bin Laden says on the 11-minute tape titled "Reflections on the Method of Relief Work."

"If governments spent (on relief) only one percent of what is spent on armies, they would change the face of the world for poor people," he said.

The top al-Qaida leader said a new "well-funded" relief organization should be created to study Muslim regions near bodies of water to prevent future flooding, to create development projects in impoverished regions and to work on farming and agriculture to guarantee food security.

"The famine and drought in Africa that we see, and the flooding in Pakistan and other parts of the world, with thousands dead along with millions of refugees, that's why people with hearts should move quickly to save their brothers and sisters," he said.

He urged Muslim businessmen to develop unused agricultural land in Sudan — where bin Laden was based in the 1990s — to boost food security in case of disaster.

The audiotape was posted on Islamic militant websites, according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi forums and provided a copy of the message. Its authenticity could not be independently confirmed, though the voice resembled that of bin Laden in confirmed messages by him. The tape is aired over a still photograph of a smiling bin Laden superimposed over a picture of a man distributing aid.

The United States and Pakistani officials have often expressed fears that militant groups in Pakistan could drum up support by exploiting frustration among Pakistanis who feel aid has not reached them quickly following the floods that swept through the country starting in late July.

International donors have pledged more than $800 million for flood relief in Pakistan, the bulk of it coming from the United States which has donated nearly $350 million. The United Nations last month hiked up its call for aid, seeking to raise $2 billion for Pakistan's flood victims, its largest humanitarian appeal ever.

Two earlier al-Qaida videos about the floods took a sharply militant tone.

In a video released last week, a U.S.-born al-Qaida spokesman, Adam Gadahn, urged Muslims in Pakistan to join Islamist militants fighting their nation's rulers, saying that Islamabad's "sluggish and halfhearted" response to recent floods showed it did not care for them.

Before that, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, made a thinly veiled call on Pakistanis to rise up against their government over what he said was the "failure" of authorities there to provide relief to flood victims.

Bin Laden often takes a more elevated, philosophical stance than his deputies, aiming to present himself as a sort of elder statesman — opining, for example, on global warming in past messages. Still, in his last audiotape — released in March — he threatened retaliation if the U.S. executes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed architect of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/a..._mi_ea/ml_bin_laden_tape

By Mohamed Sudam Mohamed Sudam

SANAA (Reuters) – Suspected al Qaeda militants attacked two Western targets in Yemen on Wednesday, firing a rocket at a senior British diplomat's car and killing a Frenchman at a gas and oil installation.

The attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, which has threatened to strike against Western targets and the Yemeni government, which declared war on the group's local arm after it claimed a failed attack on a U.S.-bound airliner in December.

In London, the British Foreign Office said a British Embassy vehicle carrying the deputy chief of the British mission was attacked and that one British embassy staff member in the vehicle suffered a minor injury.

"The vehicle was on its way to the British embassy, with five embassy staff on board," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

"One member of staff suffered minor injuries and is undergoing treatment, all others were unhurt."

A security source in Yemen said three Yemeni bystanders were wounded in the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack. President Ali Abdullah Saleh met the British envoy to discuss the attack.

The Frenchman died in a shooting incident inside the compound of Austrian-owned oil and gas group OMV, France's Foreign Ministry said. A security source said a Yemeni guard working for a private security firm went on a shooting spree, and government forces subsequently disarmed him.

In London, Foreign Secretary William Hague called it a "shameful attack." He said the attack would only reinforce Britain's determination to help Yemen confront its challenges.

Both attacks followed tightened security in the capital of the embattled country whose conflicts with a resurgent al Qaeda, secessionists in the south and Shi'ite rebels in the north has raised Western and Gulf Arab fears it is on the verge of becoming a failed state.

WORSENING SECURITY

Those fears worsened after the Yemen-based arm of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the botched bombing of the U.S.-bound airliner. The group also said it was behind a failed assassination attempt on the deputy interior minister of Saudi Arabia, Yemen's neighbor and the world's top oil exporter.

"These twin attacks reinforce the overall picture that the security situation in Yemen has been deteriorating since the start of the year, since the Yemeni government and the U.S. stepped up their fight against al Qaeda," said Nicole Stracke of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

"Al Qaeda has been reacting to this. But these attacks are not an escalation - it's clear they are under huge pressure and it shows in their operations. Shooting an RPG is not a complicated operation," she said.

Stracke also said the militants may have chosen to target the British embassy because it was easier to access than the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa.

An al Qaeda suicide bomber attacked the British ambassador's convoy in April, killing himself and injuring three others. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said it was behind that attack, accusing the British envoy of leading a war on Muslims in the peninsula.

Yemen's population of unemployed youths are seen as potential recruits for Islamist fighters, and Western donor nations including Britain backed Yemen in its fight against al Qaeda at a United Nations meeting in New York last month.

More than 40 percent of Yemen's 23 million people live on less than $2 a day, and concerns about instability and corruption have hampered growth and made unemployment worse.

LINKS TO BIN LADEN

Yemen is the ancestral home of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who is thought to be in hiding somewhere in the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Analysts say Yemenis have long formed a significant body of al Qaeda footsoldiers abroad.

Al Qaeda in Yemen announced last year that Yemen was the base for its Saudi and other Gulf operations. It stepped up attacks this year in apparent reprisal for the government's increased collaboration with the United States.

Yemen's Western allies and Saudi Arabia have long feared a resurgent al Qaeda wing could take advantage of rising insecurity and weak central control to use Yemen as a base for attacks that would destabilize the region and beyond.

The failed airliner bombing prompted Washington to step up training, intelligence and military aid to Sanaa. Yemen cooperated with Washington after the September 11 attacks of 2001 to stamp out the group's presence.

Suspected U.S. drones -- unmanned aircraft also used against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- have been criticized by rights watchdog Amnesty International as extrajudicial killings.

Al Qaeda and the Yemeni government have clashed for many years, but the group's operations have typically focused on Western targets.

An al Qaeda attack on the U.S. embassy in Sanaa in 2008 killed 16 people, including six attackers.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_yemen_attack;_ylt=--

Al Qaeda Troubled by
Helen Thomas's Firing

Reading the latest edition of al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine…

A few weeks ago, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the second edition of its online magazine, Inspire. As with the first edition, Inspire seeks to garner new recruits in the West who are willing to carry out acts of jihad. Much of the publication is devoted to wooing would-be terrorists willing to emulate the acts of Major Nidal Malik Hassan (aka the Fort Hood shooter) and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (who tried to blow up Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009). Both Hassan and Abdulmutallab had significant ties to AQAP prior to their respective days of terror.

Hassan received, at a minimum, spiritual guidance via email from Anwar al Awlaki, who is a top AQAP cleric. Abdulmutallab was convinced to join AQAP’s jihad by listening to al Awlaki’s lectures and even traveled to Yemen to receive training at an AQAP-run camp. Abdulmutallab was even able to meet Awlaki in person. U.S. counterterrorism officials have directly implicated Awlaki in the Christmas Day plot.

So, Inspire’s message is deadly serious. It is also at times comical.

One page, for instance, lists “Questions We Should Be Asking.” The first one is this:

If a long time journalist and reporter like Helen Thomas was thrown out for truthful words on the Israeli occupation, doesn’t that hint to everyone who’s really in control of America?

The authors of Inspire are referring, of course, to the kerfuffle over Helen Thomas’s unhinged remarks concerning Israel and the Jews. AQAP’s question could be considered a throwaway line, but in reality it demonstrates two important aspects of al Qaeda’s propaganda.

First, al Qaeda plays fairly close attention to the headlines coming out of the U.S., looking to seize on anything it can.

Helen Thomas Retires Amidst Uproar 2 min - Jun 6, 2010 Legendary UPI reporter Helen Thomas has retired after angry words directed at Israel. Sharyl Attkisson reports on the ... cbsnews.com -

Nov 3, 2010.

BAGHDAD – Al-Qaida's front group in Iraq has threatened more attacks on Christians after a siege on a Baghdad church that left 58 people dead, linking the warning to claims that Egypt's Coptic Church is holding women captive for converting to Islam.

The Islamic State of Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for Sunday's assault on a Catholic church during Mass in downtown Baghdad, said its deadline for Egypt's Copts to release the women had expired and its fighters would attack Christians wherever they can be reached.

"We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood," the insurgent group said in a statement posted late Tuesday on militant websites.

The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella group that includes al-Qaida in Iraq and other allied Sunni insurgent factions.

It is unclear exactly what led the group to seize on the conversion disputes between Egypt's Muslims and its minority Christians, although the issue has become a rallying point for hard-line Islamists in Egypt.

In announcing its reasons for Sunday's attack, the group said it had given the Coptic Church 48 hours to release the women it says had converted to Islam. The group also demanded the release of al-Qaida-linked prisoners held in Iraq.

"All Christian centers, organizations and institutions, leaders and followers are legitimate targets for the mujahedeen (holy warriors) wherever they can reach them," it said.

The group specifically mentioned two Egyptian women married to Coptic priests it says are being held against their will. The church denies the allegation. Some believe the women converted to Islam to leave their husbands because divorce is banned by the church.

Over the past few years in Egypt, arguments over these kinds of alleged conversions have exacerbated Muslim-Christian tensions already high over issues like the construction of new churches. The two communities generally live in peace, though clashes have taken place.

The Baghdad church siege was the deadliest ever recorded against Iraq's Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as members of the community have fled to other countries to escape the violence.

The death toll in a series of attacks mainly targeting Shiites Tuesday in Baghdad, meanwhile, rose to 91, according to Iraqi police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

Iraqi state TV aired footage Wednesday of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visiting victims of the blasts in Baghdad's hospitals. The televised trips to civilians wounded in attacks were a first for al-Maliki, who has been struggling to keep his job since his Shiite-dominated alliance was narrowly defeated by the Sunni-backed bloc of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in the March 7 parliamentary election.

Neither bloc won an outright majority, setting up a fight for allies that has left the government stalemated. There was a glimmer of hope for political progress Wednesday when parliament's acting speaker, Fouad Massoum, called the lawmakers to convene Monday and elect his successor.

However, the acting speaker only has the right to call parliament to session and can't necessarily force all the members to show so it was unclear whether the date would hold or that the announcement signified any progress in the political talks.

Last week, Iraq's highest court ordered the 325 lawmakers back to work after a virtual eight-month recess. The parliament has met only once since the March 7 vote for just 20 minutes to allow more time to choose a new leadership.

Under the constitution, parliament was required to meet within 15 days of final court approval of election results and choose a speaker, then a president. The appointments had to be put off because they are part of the negotiations over the rest of the new leadership — including a prime minister and top Cabinet officials.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/a...n_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq;_ylt=--

November 5, 2010.

Al-Qaeda claims
responsibility

Al- Qaeda's Yemen-based wing claimed responsiblity for the foiled plot to send explosive parcels to the United States in a statement that appeared on Islamist websites today.

The group claimed the attacks in a message posted on Islamist internet forums and translated by SITE Intelligence Group. It said it would continue to strike American and Western interests and would specifically target civilian and cargo aircraft.

"We say to Obama, we have struck your jets three times in one year and we will continue, God willing, to strike the interests of America and its allies," it continued.

The cargo aircraft bombs were addressed to synagogues in Chicago, and one had been carried on two passenger flights before being intercepted by police. A number of western countries have suspended air freight from Yemen and tightened security of air cargo in the wake of the incidents.

France intensified its airline security procedures this week in light of the cargo plane parcels, an audio threat against the country from Osama bin Laden and a series of letter bombs sent from Greece to European countries.

In Athens yesterday, Greek police detonated a parcel bomb disguised as a book addressed to the French embassy. It was sent on Monday, when the first wave of devices was sent to foreign governments and embassies by what Greek foreign minister Dimitris Droutsas described as “extreme left, anarchist groups”.

Small bombs exploded at the Swiss and Russian embassies in Athens on Tuesday, a parcel with explosives was intercepted at the German chancellor’s office and another package addressed to Italy’s prime minister caught fire when it was checked. Police also intercepted a booby-trapped parcel addressed to French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday and found parcel bombs at the Chilean and Bulgarian embassies.




http://www.irishtimes.com...010/1105/breaking65.html