DUBAI/BAGHDAD, 18 April 2007 — The head of an Al-Qaeda-led group in Iraq said the country has become a “university of terrorism” producing highly qualified warriors since the 2003 US-led invasion.
In an audio recording posted on the Internet yesterday, Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, said his fighters were successfully confronting US forces in Iraq and have begun producing a guided missile called Al-Qods 1 or Jerusalem 1.
“The largest batch of soldiers for jihad ... in the history of Iraq are graduating and they have the highest level of competence in the world,” Baghdadi said. He also sought to mend fences with other anti-US insurgent groups in Iraq following reports of tensions between them.
“From the military point of view, one of the (enemy) devils was right in saying that if Afghanistan was a school of terror, then Iraq is a university of terrorism,” said the leader of the group set up last year by Al-Qaeda’s Iraq wing and some other Sunni groups.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s Cabinet debated yesterday who would replace six ministers loyal to Moqtada Al-Sadr after they quit a day earlier, and officials said nonsectarian technocrats would likely be chosen.
In the biggest Cabinet shake-up since Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki took office a year ago, the ministers pulled out of the government in protest at his refusal to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal, a demand of the anti-American cleric. The Sadrists, who form the single biggest parliamentary bloc in the ruling Shiite Alliance, called on Maliki to appoint nonpartisan independents, a move the prime minister welcomed.
American military casualties in Iraq for the month so far climbed to 50 yesterday.
