| SMH ran virtually this same story a couple days ago. We carried it here. This has a few more details, so I'm leaving it in. |
Hey, I thought there weren't any al Qaeda in Irag - you weren't lying to us were you Sammy?
Al Qaeda fighters may be in southern Iraq, coordinating grenade and gun attacks on British forces in a town near Basra, it was reported last night. "The information we have received from POWs today is that an Al Qaeda cell may be operating in Az Zubayr. There are possibly around a dozen of them," a British military source in Iraq told a reporter for The Scotsman.
| I'd guess they originated in northern Iraq, from one of the orgs associated with Ansar al-Islam... |
British troops were believed to be planning a military strike on the Al Qaeda hideout. If the prisoners’ reports are true, they may provide a concrete link between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. Several links between Al Qaeda and Iraq have been reported previously:- In northern Iraq, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group called Ansar al-Islam is allegedly plotting suicide attacks on U.S. forces and has allegedly experimented with chemical weapons. Two members of an Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda cell were killed this week in a shootout between U.S. and Ansar al-Islam forces, and the group’s base also has been bombed.
Reports say Ansar al-Islam has about 600 members — and it may be getting reinforcements from Al Qaeda cells in Chechnya and other regions, sources told The Post earlier this week. The group also is blamed for a suicide bombing Saturday that killed an Australian TV cameraman.
- Two dozen "Al Qaeda affiliates" followed terrorist Abu Mussab al Zarqawi when he sought medical treatment in Baghdad, and remained there afterward, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations last month.
| Both these points are describing the same thing. Ansar's a little piece of al-Qaeda, established in the Zagros mountains. It's made up of a Qaeda core, with muscle from local Kurdish Islamist groups. One of them is al-Tawhid, a branch of which is Zarqawi's hit team. It has branches in Europe — a HQ in Britain, and cells in Germany. Tawhid's "spriritual head" is Abu Qatada, who's been described as Binny's "ambassador to Europe," and who's also affialiated with Algeria's GAI. Zarqawi and Tawhid are also involved in Chechnya, where they've been training North Africans in chem warfare techniques — like the ricin cells found in Britain and France. The Kuridish forces tie some of Ansar's funding to Sammy in Baghdad, and they're reputed to have trained 200 or so of Sammy's fedayeen. |
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