Iraqis Catch Suspect in Shrine Bombing

06/28/2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi forces captured a key al-Qaida suspect wanted in the bombing of a Shiite shrine, but the mastermind of the attack that brought the country to the brink of civil war was still at large, a top security official said Wednesday.

Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, a Tunisian also known as Abu Qudama, was captured after being seriously wounded in a clash with security forces north of Baghdad a few days ago in which 15 other foreign fighters were killed, National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said.

He also identified the fugitive ringleader in the operation as an Iraqi named Haitham Sabah Shaker Mohammed al-Badri, the head of a gang that included two other Iraqis, four Saudis and Abu Qudama. He said the gang planted bombs in the 1,200-year-old Askariya mosque that exploded on Feb. 22 and obliterated its glistening golden dome, an addition completed in 1905.

A spasm of sectarian killing and revenge attacks on Sunni and Shiite mosques after the bombing of the revered shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, took the country to the brink of civil war.


Since then, more than 20,000 families were displaced, hundreds of civilians were killed, and dozens of Sunni and Shiite mosques were damaged or destroyed.

The mosque attack was staged “in order to ignite sectarian strife among the Iraqi people,” al-Rubaie said.

The announcement came as the Iraqi government struggled to contain rampant ethnic and sectarian violence in the country and days after Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki unveiled a 24-point national reconciliation plan aimed at bringing Sunni Arab insurgents into the political process.

Key lawmakers have said that seven insurgent groups - not including al-Qaida or Islamic terror groups but mostly made up of former members or backers of Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime - had offered the government a conditional truce.

But one of those purported groups, the Mohammed Army, issued a statement denying such contacts had been made.


“We heard from the media that Mohammed Army brigades in Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and Ramadi were among those negotiated with the Iraqi government ... and that did not happen,” according to the statement, which was dated Monday and e-mailed to journalists in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad.

The Mohammed Army is made up of former members of Saddam’s Baath Party, members of his elite Republican Guards and former military commanders. It, too, has focused attacks on the U.S. military and played a role in the November 2004 battle for Fallujah.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad discussed the situation in the country with Saudi King Abdullah and other top officials Tuesday in Jeddah, the U.S. Embassy said. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, has good relations and some influence among Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, which make up the core of the insurgency.

Sporadic attacks continued across Iraq.

A suicide car bomber blew up himself near a Sunni mosque in a market south of the northeastern city of Baqouba, killing one person and wounding 12, police said.


Armed attackers burned more than a dozen shops in Muqdadiyah, east of Baqouba, but no casualties were reported.

A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. convoy exploded in western Baghdad, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding another, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said. He had no information about U.S. casualties.

Gunmen also killed Riyadh Abdul-Majid Zuaini, the customs director for central Baghdad, and his driver in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah, Hussein said.

Clashes between gunmen and police also broke out in the northern city of Mosul, leaving a policeman wounded. One militant was arrested.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, issued a sober assessment of a two-week-old Baghdad security crackdown, saying violence had decreased slightly but not to “the degree we would like to see” since 75,000 Iraqi and American troops flooded the capital.


“It’s going to take some time. We do not see an upward trend. We ... see a slight decrease but not of the degree we would like to see at this point,” he said at a news conference in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

However, Caldwell added, “we don’t see this as turning into a civil war right now.”

While acknowledging al-Badri was still at large, al-Rubaie did not say if other members of the group had been captured.

Al-Rubaie said Abu Qudama was involved in the shooting death of an Al-Arabiya TV correspondent and two of her colleagues hours after the shrine bombing.

Abu Qudama entered Iraq in November 2003 and was captured in Udaim, a village about 70 miles north of Baghdad, al-Rubaie said.

“Abu Qudama confessed that he killed hundreds of Iraqis” in different parts of the country, al-Rubaie said, without giving details.

“Iraqi forces and its intelligence have achieved major penetrations of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups,” he said.