"Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, the national security adviser for the interim government, accused the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi and former Baath party members of trying to provoke a sectarian civil war."
Duh- of course they are. The real question is "What do you do about it?"
50 Dead in Eight Iraq Suicide Bombings
24 minutes ago Middle East - AP
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Eight suicide bombings and other insurgent attacks across Iraq (news - web sites) on Saturday killed at least 50 people, including a U.S. soldier, a Ministry of Defense official said, as Shiite Muslim worshippers celebrated their holiest day of the year.
The steady stream of attacks using suicide bombings, mortars and gunmen, defense ministry official Capt. Sabah Yasin said.
The death toll includes at least eight suicide bombers, who staged attacks in and around Baghdad, targeting religious gatherings and Iraqi checkpoints. Many more explosions were heard in the capital throughout the day.
In one of the deadliest attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his car at an Iraqi army checkpoint in Latifiya, 20 miles south of the capital, killing nine Iraqi soldiers, he said.
The attacks came one day after at least 36 people, mostly Shiites, were killed in a string of attacks.
Saturday's bombings, during the religious festival of Ashoura, occurred despite stepped-up security around the country. Authorities had hoped to prevent a repeat of last year's attacks during Ashoura in which insurgent blasts killed at least 181 people in Karbala and Baghdad.
The attacks occurred as a five-member U.S. congressional delegation, including Sens. Hillary Clinton (news - web sites), D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., met with Iraqi government officials in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
"The fact that you have these suicide bombers now, wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray, is to me, an indication of their failure," Clinton said.
Iraqi police said they made some headway against the ongoing insurgency, arresting two of its leaders, including a high-ranking aide to Iraqi al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The suspects allegedly played key roles in the insurgency in Baqouba and Mosul.
Nearly all of Saturday's attacks inside Baghdad took place in the northern Adhamiya and Kadhimiya districts. It was unclear which Baghdad attack killed the U.S. soldier, whose identity was withheld by the military, and an Iraqi. Another U.S. soldier was wounded in that attack, the military said.
The string of blasts started when a suicide bomber walked into a tent outside a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad and blew himself up, killing at least three people and injuring 10, police captain Hussain al-Ani said. About 50 people were inside the tent attending a funeral.
It was unclear why the attacker blew himself up inside a tent full of Sunnis outside the Fatah (news - web sites) Pasha mosque, but similar structures were set up outside Shiite mosques for the Ashoura celebration. Most attacks by insurgents, who are believed to be predominantly Sunni extremists, are aimed at Shiites.
The attacks then shifted to the northern districts, where another suicide bomber killed two Iraqi National Guardsmen.
A bomber blew himself up on a public bus in Kadhimiya, killing one child and six adults. Another 10 people were injured.
Police officer Rashid Haroun said a suicide bomber blew himself up close to the Nada Mosque in Kadhimiya, killing seven Shiites, including three National Guardsmen, and injuring 55 people.
Another two other suicide bombers died in the Kadhimiya area, one who blew himself up in the Judges Institute — an academic institution — but killed no one else, and another apparently shot dead by U.S. troops, police Capt. Hazim Ibrahim said.
In other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up a car outside an Iraqi National Guard base in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing six Iraqi Guardsmen and wounding another, Yasin said.
Six Guardsmen were killed in a mortar attack on the main highway between Baghdad and Hillah, he said.
Gunmen also holed up in a Baghdad building and opened fire on a funeral procession in which mourners carried coffins of some of those killed Friday in a bombing at the capital's al-Khadimain mosque, witnesses said.
Iraqi National Guard troops guarding the procession foiled that attack, returning fire and capturing one of the assailants, said Sgt. Ali Hussein. No casualties were reported.
Ashoura marks the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, in a seventh century battle for leadership of the Islamic world.
Authorities, bracing for violence, stepped up security around the country. In Karbala, vehicle traffic — even motorcycles, bikes and pushcarts — was prohibited in an attempt to avert bomb attacks.
Insurgents staged five attacks Friday, killing at least 36 people in the deadliest day since the historic Jan. 30 elections won by the Shiite ticket, the United Iraqi Alliance. Shiites blamed the violence on radical Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have staged car bombings, shootings and kidnappings to try to destabilize Iraq's new government.
"Those infidel Wahhabis, those Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) followers, they did this because they hate Shiites," said Sari Abdullah, a worshipper at Baghdad's al-Khadimain mosque who was injured by shrapnel from Friday's explosion. "They are afraid of us. They are not Muslims. They are infidels."
A militant Web site posted claims of responsibility from the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq for two attacks Friday. There was no way to verify the claims.
Iraqi police said Saturday they arrested two leaders of the insurgency, including a top aide to al-Zarqawi.
Officers in western Baqouba arrested Haidar Abu Bawari, also known as the "Prince of the Holy Warriors," during a raid on a house, police chief Abdel Molan said. The suspected was described as a top aide to al-Zarqawi and the man behind the insurgency in Baqouba.
"We found with him different kinds of weapons, including mortars, explosives, automatic weapons and computers in addition to photocopying machines, which are used in forging identification cards for police officers," Molan told The Associated Press.
Police said they were pursuing Bawari's brother-in-law, who is a close aide to al-Zarqawi.
Iraq's government also said it arrested a key insurgent in the northern city of Mosul who also was a former member of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath party, an announcement said.
Harbi Abdul Khudair al-Mahmoudi, 50, also known as Abu Nor, was arrested Thursday when someone turned him in, the interim government said. One of his aides also was arrested.
Al-Mahmoudi, a former Iraqi air force pilot, formed an Islamic militant organization called "The Jihadi Salafi group," which carried out several attacks against the Iraqi National Guard.
"Documents which show dates of attacks he planned in Mosul were seized with him," the government statement said.
Al-Qaida in Iraq is believed to be behind series of deadly attacks against American forces, Iraqi national guardsmen and Shiites.
A U.S. soldier was killed Friday on patrol in northern Iraq and a second was killed in the south, the military said. Three other American soldiers were killed in separate attacks in the country's north Wednesday and Thursday.
At least 1,476 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, the national security adviser for the interim government, accused the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi and former Baath party members of trying to provoke a sectarian civil war. Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people.
"It's a paradoxical idea when they claim that they are fighting the infidels and at the same time they kill Muslims during Friday prayers," he said.
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