'All out war' on Iraqi Shiites
2005-09-14 22:03
Dubai - Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared "all-out war" against the Shiites in Iraq, in an audiotape attributed to him and posted on the Internet Wednesday.
Earlier, militants loyal to the Jordanian-born Zarqawi claimed they had carried out a wave of suicide bombings in Baghdad to avenge an offensive by US and Iraqi government troops on the northern rebel town of Tal Afar.
The bombings claimed almost 130 lives, making it the bloodiest day of insurgent attacks in the Iraqi capital since the US-led war of March 2003.
"The conquest of revenge for the Sunni people of Tal Afar has started," Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers said in the statement, the authenticity of which could not be verified.
- AFP