Iraq vows to destroy allied forces by stepping up suicide attacks and claims 4,000 suicide bombers have recently arrived in the country to ”martyr” themselves by killing U.S., British and
Australian troops.
In Baghdad, Iraqi Army spokesman Gen. Hazem al-Rawi said the Arabs have volunteered to fight coalition troops.
”Martyrdom operations will continue not only by Iraqis but by thousands of Arabs who came to Baghdad,” he said. ”The mujahideen who have come to Iraq have come from all Arab countries. We are a believing people, a fighting people. Jihad is a duty ordained by God.”
”They left their countries and families to come here and seek heaven. They promised not to return to their countries but to be buried in Iraq.”
 Members of Saddam’s ‘suicide Fedayeen’ (news.com.au file photo) |
Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan added fuel to the war of words by explicitly embracing suicide attacks as ”routine military policy,” and by describing Saturday’s suicide attack, which killed four U.S. Marines, as proof of the regime’s will to resist.
”We will use any means to kill our enemy in our land and we will follow the enemy into its land. This is just the beginning,” Ramadan told journalists in Baghdad. ”You’ll hear more pleasant
news later.”
He added: ”You will not find any American, British or Australian soldiers desecrating our land.”
Australian navy commander Capt. Peter Jones acknowledged the Navy was concerned about the threat of explosives-laden vessels emerging from the upper reaches of the Khawr Abd ‘Allah waterway, and said small boats laden with explosives and piloted by Iraqi fanatics now posed a major threat to Australian warships in the Persian Gulf, according to a report in news.com.au.
”There are obviously fanatics or pretty motivated people out there,” he said.
”It is more likely to be small boats and that is why we have patrol boats there all the time running up and down.”
About 150,000 Moroccans, chanting ”suicide attacks lead to freedom,” poured through the streets of Rabat yesterday in the first major demonstration to be approved by Moroccan authorities since the start of the war, according to Reuters.
Protesters accused the United States, Britain and Israel of plotting to control Iraq before attacking other Muslim countries in the Middle East.
A suicide bomb that injured dozens in northern Israel Sunday was ”a gift to the Iraqi people,” according to Islamic Jihad, the terror group that claimed responsibility for the attack.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad announced on al-Jazeera television that the terror group had sent volunteers for suicide missions to Baghdad.
Until now, no senior member of the Iraqi regime has praised suicide bombings as a tactic, although Saddam Hussein has given money to families of suicide bombers.
One of the top commanders of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, the largest faction of the PLO, says hundreds of Palestinians living
in Lebanon have also been sent to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks against American and British soldiers, as WorldNetDaily reported.
Col. Munir Maqdah said his men were already in Baghdad, prepared to launch suicide attacks and that another group of Fatah suicide bombers is due there shortly. Palestinian sources said the Fatah volunteers entered Iraq through Syria.
Scores of volunteers from across the Arab world, including Syria, Algeria, Sudan and Tunisia, have been seen gathering outside the Iraqi embassy in Jordan, according to the London Telegraph.
An embassy official in Amman, the Jordanian capital, confirmed men have approached the embassy about travel to Iraq, but said none had been given visas and most movement across the frontier for non-Iraqis was suspended.
Iraq’s border crossing with neighboring Jordan is the busiest land route still open for traffic.
Jordanian officials say about 5,000 Iraqis have returned to their country since the onset of the war.
Kathem Abbas, 32, who served in the Iraqi army for three years and took part in the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, says his only purpose in leaving Jordan after 18 months working as a builder was to resist the invasion.
”I want to fight America,” he said. ”God is with us in this war and America brings only evil, the ultimate evil, and I will fight them. With God’s help I will fight America to the end.”
Abbas, who is traveling to Iraq with his cousin and fellow Gulf War veteran, dismissed any suggestion the coalition forces were liberators. Abbas said: ”They are liars when they say they are coming to free Iraq. They are coming as occupiers to take our oil.”
Previous story:
Arafat’s suicide squads
dispatched to Baghdad
The 2 things Trump can do to make himself the GOAT president
Wayne Allyn Root