UN attack: Al-Qaeda suspected

2003-08-19 20:44

Cairo, Egypt - The target and the nature of the attack in the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday bore the marks of Islamic militant groups like al-Qaeda.

At least 20 UN workers and Iraqis were killed, including the chief UN official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

As he toured the wreckage of the hotel that housed UN headquarters in Baghdad, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik told reporters that evidence suggested the attack was a suicide bombing, and noted attackers used "an enormous amount of explosives." Kerik is in Baghdad to rebuild the Iraqi police force.

High-impact bombings

Al-Qaeda, blamed for the 9/11 attacks on the United States, is known for such high-impact suicide bombings, while strikes blamed on Saddam Hussein loyalists and other homegrown guerrillas have been on a much smaller scale and have not involved suicide attackers.

Earlier this month, the targets and scale of the attacks in Iraq broadened from US forces to civilian targets, when a car bomb at the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad killed 11 people.

L. Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, has said he considered Ansar al-Islam, described as a Taliban-style group that had been operating in northern Iraq before the war, as a possible suspect in the embassy bombing.

Bremer believes Ansar al-Islam, which has been linked to al-Qaeda, is regrouping in the Baghdad area after its northern Iraq bases were destroyed by US forces during the war.

No one has claimed responsibility in either the embassy or the UN bombings. Kerik said it was too early to point fingers at al-Qaeda.

Remnants of Saddam force

In Bahrain, the chairperson of Iraq's Governing Council blamed remnants of Iraq's former intelligence establishment.

"This is sabotage perpetrated by evil-minded elements that target innocent Iraqis and the positive role of the UN ... in our country," said Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was on a tour of the Gulf.

Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islam at Egypt's Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said Iraqis who have been staging guerrilla attacks against US forces they see as occupiers rather than liberators "have no problems with the UN" Groups like al-Qaeda do.

"The attack is logical within the ideology of al-Qaeda," Rashwan said.

Hostility toward UN

Al-Qaeda has long expressed hostility toward the United Nations, accusing the international body of lending its legitimacy to encroachment on Palestinian lands and attempts to contain Iraq.

Following the 9/11 attacks, as the United States lobbied for support at the United Nations for the war that toppled on Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, which had harboured al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden appeared in a videotape accusing the United Nations of "issuing decisions supporting the oppressive, tyrannical and arrogant America against those oppressed who have emerged from a ferocious war at the hands of the Soviet Union." The reference was to the struggle against the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

A statement that appeared on Muslim militant web sites over the weekend was attributed to a group that claimed it was responsible for last week's massive blackout in North America and said that was in part "a message delivered to the United Nations ... whose headquarters is in New York." US officials have ruled out sabotage as a factor in the blackout and the existence of the Abu Hafs el-Masri Brigades, the group that purportedly made the claim of responsibility, and its links to al-Qaeda have not been confirmed.

Islamic militants

Mohammed Salah, a Cairo-based journalist who closely follows Muslim extremism, said Tuesday's attack on the UN headquarters was likely the work of Islamic militants who see Iraq as the next base for jihad, or holy war, against the Americans.

"Maybe it is al-Qaeda, maybe another organisation," Salah said. "In the last few months there have been many attacks in different countries. In my opinion, most are not al-Qaeda, but are other organisations persuaded by bin Laden and his ideas."

He said these groups would perceive the United Nations as a target because they believe it gives in to American pressure.

- AP