IRAQ: Foreign fighters who have used Iraq as a combat training ground are returning home with plans to mount similar attacks throughout the Muslim world, according to Iraq's interior minister.
Bayan Jabr said yesterday that papers found on the body of Abdullah Azzam, the senior al- Qaeda figure killed in an American raid in Baghdad last week, suggested that the organisation aimed to extend its campaign of suicide bombings, assassinations and beheadings beyond Iraq.
"We got hold of a letter from Abu Azzam [to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq] asking him to begin to move a number of Arab fighters to the countries they came from to transfer their experience in car-bombings in Iraq," Mr Jabr told Reuters. "So you will see insurgencies in other countries."
US officials acknowledge that since the invasion in March 2003, Iraq has become a magnet for militant Islamists eager to fight American soldiers in the name of jihad. News that some of these fighters are taking their new-found fighting skills back home are alarming security experts.
Though foreign fighters are thought to account for only a small percentage of the insurgents in Iraq, they are believed to be behind many attacks and atrocities. Iraqi leaders have urged fellow Arab governments, including Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, to do more to help disrupt the supply lines of militants into the country.
A western diplomat in Baghdad said he had seen intelligence warnings of the consequences of 2½ years of "porous borders and political instability".
The diplomat said: "The space enjoyed by militants in jihadist training camps in towns in the 'Sunni Triangle' and the remote desert areas of western Iraq has enabled them to perfect all sorts of insurgent know-how, from bomb-making to urban guerrilla warfare. Now they could well spread it to the rest of the region."
Last week Newsweek magazine reported that Taliban rebels in Afghanistan had brought in a team of instructors from Iraq to pass on the latest techniques.
Mr Jabr said hundreds of foreign militants had already left Iraq. They now numbered fewer than 1,000 compared with up to 3,000 six months ago.
He said the reduction was due to the success of recent US and Iraqi offensives. US forces claim to have killed at least eight militants on Saturday.
In a report today, Human Rights Watch says insurgents are responsible for war crimes against Iraqi civilians. It calls for regional leaders who have expressed support for the insurgency to condemn them. - (Guardian service)
The US military has rejected an al-Qaeda claim to be holding two US marines hostage in western Iraq as marines attacked al-Qaeda guerrillas in the region for a second day.
A statement yesterday on a site used by the group said: "Al-Qaeda soldiers succeeded in kidnapping two marines ... Al-Qaeda gives the infidels 24 hours to release female Sunni Muslim prisoners ... or they should not bother to look for their children."
However, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieut Col Steve Boylan, said: "I have not heard anything about any of our folks being taken. I would suspect that these are unfounded rumours, as that is what has happened in the past."
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the web statement, which was signed with a name that usually accompanies the group's official announcements.
It said the marines had been captured during "Operation Iron Fist", the latest of many recent offensives by about 1,000 US troops against al-Qaeda around Qaim on the Syrian border. - (Reuters)