Female Bomber Kills 6 In Iraq
A woman, disguised in a man's robes and headdress, slipped into a line of army recruits and detonated explosives strapped to her body Wednesday, killing at least six recruits and wounding 35 near the border with Syria, the first known suicide attack by a woman in Iraq's insurgency.
The attack appeared aimed at showing that militants could still strike in a town where U.S. and Iraqi offensives drove out insurgents only two weeks before. A female suicide bomber may have been chosen because she could get through the checkpoints leading into the town of Tal Afar, at which women are rarely searched, then don her disguise to join the line of men, Iraqi officials said.
Iraq's most notorious insurgent group, al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack in an Internet statement, saying it was carried out by a "blessed sister."
It came a day after U.S. and Iraqi officials announced their forces killed the second-in-command of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abdullah Abu Azzam, in a raid in Baghdad over the weekend. Still, the killing has not slowed insurgent violence, with at least 83 people, including six U.S. servicemembers killed in attacks since Sunday.
In other developments:
The female suicide bomber was wearing a traditional white "dishdasha" robe and a checkered kaffiya headscarf, both worn only by men, to blend in with the line of Iraqi applicants waiting at an army recruitment center in Tal Afar, Maj. Jamil Mohammed Saleh said.
She then detonated explosives packed with metal balls and hidden under her clothes, Saleh said. Six recruits were killed and 35 wounded, said hospital officials in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.
In a photo of the attacker's head taken by Saleh and shown to The Associated Press, the woman appeared to be in her early 20s with dark eyes, light skin and brownish hair. Saleh said it was not known whether she was Iraqi.
U.S. and Iraqi troops swept through Tal Afar in a Sept. 8-12 offensive, with Iraqi authorities claiming nearly 200 suspected militants were killed and 315 captured. But many of the insurgents in the town escaped, and since then the bulk of the forces participating in the offensive withdrew, though a U.S. base remains.
It was the first known time that a woman has succeeded in carrying out a suicide bombing since the insurgency began, though four women, reportedly sent by another insurgent group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, were caught in a town south of Baghdad in March before they could set off explosives belts they were wearing.
In the last days of Saddam Hussein's regime, just before the April 2003 fall of Baghdad, two women detonated their car near the city of Haditha, killing three American soldiers.
Gen. Ahmed Mohammed Khalaf, the regional police chief, said insurgents were exploiting the fact that women are not searched at checkpoints leading into the town "because of religious and social traditions."
Women and children will now be searched at Tal Afar checkpoints, he said.
But the attack raised the prospect of more women bombers being used, a tactic that is difficult to defend against, especially during the referendum. Men and women turned out in large numbers to vote in parts of Iraq during January parliamentary elections and images of veiled women flashing their ink-stained fingers after voting became an iconic symbol of hopes for democracy.
Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, intelligence head at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said the Tal Afar attack "rings danger alarms" and requires new techniques, including increased searches of women at sensitive locations.
"But this will be a problem, because women are taking part in our new political life and finding large numbers of female security officers to search them is not an easy process," he told AP.
In the past, women have taken only a support role in the insurgency, helping smuggle equipment or feed, shelter and give medical treatment to fighters, said Nora Bensahel, an insurgency expert with Rand Corp., a nonprofit research group based in Santa Monica, California.
"This could be a sign that the insurgency is getting greater support among a larger segment of the population, that women are getting more militant and willing to take on a greater role," Bensahel said. "It could also be a sign that the insurgents are having trouble finding male recruits."