Terror Tape Urges War On Shiites
Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq purportedly declared all out war on Shiite Muslims, Iraqi troops and the country's government in audio tape released on Internet on Wednesday.
The statement followed a deadly day in Baghdad, where explosions throughout the capital killed more than 160 people.
The speaker on the tape, introduced as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also said his militant forces would attack any Iraqi it believes has cooperated with an ongoing U.S.-led offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar.
"If proven that any of (Iraq's) national guards, police or army are agents of the Crusaders, they will be killed and his house will demolished or burnt, after evacuating all women and children, as a punishment," the voice said in the new tape that surfaced on an Internet site known for carrying extremist Islamist content.
The speaker on the tape, which could not be immediately authenticated, announced "all out war against Shiites everywhere. Beware, there will be no mercy."
A dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing at least 160 people and wounding 570 in a series of attacks that began with a suicide car bombing that targeted laborers assembled to find work for the day. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility.
The deadliest bombing killed at least 112 people and wounded more than 200 in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah where the day laborers had gathered shortly after dawn.
Overnight Wednesday, 17 men were executed in a village north of Baghdad, which put the death toll in all violence in and around the capital Wednesday at 169 and the number continued to rise.
A senior American military official told The Associated Press he believed the rash of bombings was retaliation for the joint Iraqi-U.S. sweep through the northern city of Tal Afar in recent days to evict insurgents from their stronghold near the Syrian border. Al-Jazeera television quoted the al Qaeda as confirming that assessment.
Wednesday's carnage was believed to be the second worst since the U.S.-led invasion. On March 2, 2004, coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives hit Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 and wounding 573.
Politicians immediately denounced the bombings. Husein al-Shahristani, deputy speaker of the National Assembly called the killings "barbaric and gruesome."
In recent developments:
Sunni militants have mounted a series of attacks on the Shiites in an apparent effort to provoke retaliation and a sectarian conflict. The Kazimiyah district that saw Wednesday's deadliest attack is the same area where about 950 people were killed on Sept. 1 during a bridge stampede as tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims were headed to a nearby shrines.
Iraqi lawmakers, meanwhile, agreed on last-minute revisions to the contested draft constitution in a bid to appease the disgruntled Sunni minority that has formed the core support for the country's virulent insurgency.
With the Oct. 15 referendum on the draft constitution looming, lawmakers announced that the document had been finalized and would be sent to the United Nations for printing and distribution.
Hussein al-Shahristani, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly and a leading Shiite lawmaker, said the latest changes included an apparent bow to demands from the Arab League that the country be described as a founding member of the 22-member pan-Arab body and that it was "committed to its charter."
But that amended clause falls short of demands by Sunnis, who wanted the country's Arab identity clearly spelled out while mentions of federalism be struck from the document. They argue such language could ultimately lead to the disintegration of the multiethnic nation.
Still, the changes, which included clarifying that water resource management was the federal government's responsibility and that the prime minister would have two deputies in the Cabinet, are significant after weeks of discussions on the draft.
Hopes that a relative lull in the violence in the country would continue were shattered with the latest attacks around the capital.
At Baghdad's al-Kazimiyah Hospital, dozens of wounded men were seen lying on stretchers and gurneys, their bandages and clothes soaked in blood. One older man in a traditional Arab gown and checkered head scarf sat in a plastic chair, his blood-soaked underwear exposed with a trail of dried blood snaking down his legs.
Dr. Qays Abdel-Wahab al-Bustani told Associated Press Television News they received 75 wounded people and 47 others who were killed in the explosion. Al-Bustani said the wounded were in stable condition.
The attacks came as U.S. and Iraqi forces continued their offensive on insurgents in northern Iraq, striking hard at what officials have said are militants sneaking across the border from Syria.
On Tuesday, they launched an attack on the Euphrates River stronghold of Haditha. That attack came after some 200 militants were killed in Tal Afar in several days of fighting. Residents also reported American air strikes in the same region near Qaim, also near the Syrian border.
The offensive is apparently part of a campaign described on Monday by Iraq's defense minister, who said that Iraqi and U.S. forces would work their way along the insurgent-plagued town along the Euphrates River valley in the north, in a bid to stamp out the militants believed to be sneaking across the nearby border with Syria.