| MILITANTS loyal to al-Qaeda-linked rebel Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claim to have carried out the suspected suicide bombing of an Australian convoy in Baghdad. The overnight claim, made in a statement on an Islamist website, could not be independently verified today. "One of our lions from the martyrs brigades this morning (yesterday AEST) attacked an Australian convoy that wanted to enter the Green Zone in the Karrada district," it said. The car bomb exploded alongside the routine patrol near Australia's embassy in Baghdad, injuring three Australian soldiers, killing three Iraqis and wounding 16 other people. Zarqwi's "Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers" recently changed its name from Al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), after pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda. |