Al-Qaida in Iraq warns of 'dark days'
Source: Agencies |
May 15, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AL-QAIDA in Iraq's new leader warned Shiites yesterday that "dark days soaked with blood" lie ahead and that a new campaign of attacks was under way.
Within hours of the warning, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad just after prayers, wounding 20 worshippers as they were leaving, according to police.
Only days before the warning, Iraq was wracked by the worst attack this year, a series of coordinated bombings and assassinations that killed 119 people across 10 cities. Most of the victims were Shiites and members of the security forces.
The Iraqi insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, named al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman as its new minister of war, replacing the Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri, killed in a US-Iraqi military strike on a safe house in April. The ISI counts al-Qaida as a member group.
"Wait for the long gloomy nights and dark days soaked with blood," said Abu Suleiman, addressing Iraq's "polytheistic rejecters," an insulting term for Shiites common among extremist Sunnis. "What is happening to you nowadays is just a drizzle." The written message was posted on militant Websites yesterday.
One of the major doctrinal disputes between Sunnis and Shiites can be traced back to the first three rulers of the Muslim community after the Prophet Muhammad. Shiites reject those first three successors as illegitimate.
Al-Qaida attacks on Shiite shrines in 2006 plunged the country into a bloody cycle of mutual sectarian attacks. A measure of fragile calm, however, has returned to Iraq in the past two years.
There are fears that with the new rounds of attacks, mostly targeting Shiites, al-Qaida is hoping to provoke a backlash against Sunnis and re-ignite the sectarian warfare.
Within hours of the warning, a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad just after prayers, wounding 20 worshippers as they were leaving, according to police.
Only days before the warning, Iraq was wracked by the worst attack this year, a series of coordinated bombings and assassinations that killed 119 people across 10 cities. Most of the victims were Shiites and members of the security forces.
The Iraqi insurgent umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, named al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman as its new minister of war, replacing the Egyptian Abu Ayyub al-Masri, killed in a US-Iraqi military strike on a safe house in April. The ISI counts al-Qaida as a member group.
"Wait for the long gloomy nights and dark days soaked with blood," said Abu Suleiman, addressing Iraq's "polytheistic rejecters," an insulting term for Shiites common among extremist Sunnis. "What is happening to you nowadays is just a drizzle." The written message was posted on militant Websites yesterday.
One of the major doctrinal disputes between Sunnis and Shiites can be traced back to the first three rulers of the Muslim community after the Prophet Muhammad. Shiites reject those first three successors as illegitimate.
Al-Qaida attacks on Shiite shrines in 2006 plunged the country into a bloody cycle of mutual sectarian attacks. A measure of fragile calm, however, has returned to Iraq in the past two years.
There are fears that with the new rounds of attacks, mostly targeting Shiites, al-Qaida is hoping to provoke a backlash against Sunnis and re-ignite the sectarian warfare.
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