On the brink of civil war

A suicide car bomb killed 47 people at an army recruitment center in Baghdad Wednesday, taking the death toll to about 100 in two attacks on Iraqis working with the U.S. occupation forces within 24 hours. "It was a suicide attack by a single male," U.S. Colonel Ralph Baker told Reuters at the scene in the capital. "It was aimed strictly at Iraqis," he said. About 300-500 pounds of plastic explosives mixed with artillery shells had maximized the "kill effect," Baker added. U.S. troops said Monday they had seized a computer disc containing a letter from Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, linked by the United States to Ansar al-Islam, in which he outlined plans to destabilize Iraq. The United States says the group, which has operated in northern Iraq, is affiliated to al Qaeda. The U.S. Army said on Wednesday it had doubled the bounty for Zarqawi to $10 million. The U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, discussed the Zarqawi document Wednesday with Adnan Pachachi, a member of Iraq's Governing Council. "If you look through it you will see he has a strategic plan, basically a recipe for civil war," Bremer told Pachachi.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 11, 2004 at 12:26 PM | Permalink