New group warns 'occupiers'
2003-10-13 07:45
Baghdad - A man claiming to speak for an Iraqi resistance group warned foreign troops against joining the US-led occupation forces in Iraq, saying they will be treated as occupiers and provoke attacks on their home countries.
A compact disc video was accompanied by a statement signed by the same group. In the statement, the group promised to kill every member of the US-picked Governing Council and Iraqis who are co-operating with the US-led occupation authorities. It also listed politicians and tribal leaders as among its targets.
It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the statement or the recording, both of them obtained by The Associated Press in the city of Fallujah west of Baghdad.
The recording showed five men wearing robes and covering their faces with Arab head scarves. All five squatted motionlessly on the floor except for the one who read the statement. The group called itself the Jihad Brigades of Imam Ali bin Abi-Taleb. Behind them was a curtain with a floral design.
Guns and grenades
The men had machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and what looked like anti-tank rockets.
"We are determined to fight every soldier that arrives in Iraq from any Arab or non-Arab nation. We shall treat everyone of them as an occupier," said the man who read the statement.
"In the near future, inshallah (God willing), we shall take our operations to neighbouring and non-neighbouring nations, Arab, and non-Arab nations that send troops to Iraq," he said.
Fallujah, about 50km west of Baghdad, has been one of the most dangerous places for US troops in Iraq. It is in the "Sunni Triangle," a vast swath of land north and west of Baghdad that is mostly inhabited by Sunni Muslims who benefited from the rule of Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.
Daily attacks
US troops in the area come under daily attacks from insurgents suspected to be Saddam loyalists opposed to American occupation on religious grounds.
The speaker in the recording did not say whether his hitherto unknown group operated in the Fallujah area. The group is named after Ali bin Abi-Taleb, a cousin of Islam's 7th century prophet Muhammad and one of the most revered Shi'ite Muslim saints.
Iraq's Shi'ite majority had been oppressed by the country's minority Sunni Arabs for nearly a century. Unlike many Sunnis, the Shi'ites have welcomed Saddam's overthrow although they have misgivings about the Americans. Because they are the majority, Iraqi Shi'ites are virtually assured of dominating any future government produced by a general election, something that the Americans want to see held before the end of 2004.
Attacks on US forces blamed on Shi'ite Iraqis are rare, a fact that casts doubt on the authenticity of the recording and the statement accompanying it.
The statement's ending, however, makes it clear that the hitherto unknown group is Shi'ite. It names the holy Shi'ite cities of Najaf and Karbala as its intended battlefields in the fight against the Americans.
- AP