MADRID/BAGHDAD: More than 100 potential suicide bombers in Iraq have been recruited in Spain since 2003, a Spanish newspaper reported yesterday, citing security services.
“Spain has become one of the main European pools for Al-Qaeda and its associated groups to find jihadists and candidates for suicide in Iraq,” El Pais said. The activists, resident in Spain but mostly from north Africa, were trained by local cells which pay for their trips, the paper said.
The most active of the cells operated from the northeastern region of Catalonia and has taught at least nine would-be suicide bombers, including one who killed 28 people in Nasiriya, El Pais said.
It said they were supported by a network set up in Damascus by an Al-Qaeda-linked group based in Morocco, which helped them cross the border into Iraq.
Spanish police have carried out several operations against radicals in recent years, particularly in and around the northeastern city of Barcelona.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed a US soldier in Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday while an Iraqi died when a bicycle-riding suicide bomber blew himself up amid a mass rally against Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza.
The two attacks were demonstrations of the violence that still flares up in Iraq as the government prepares to take responsibility for security from the US military in a few days. A spokesman for the US military, Army Capt. Charles Calio, said the soldier was killed by a roadside bomb that targeted an American convoy. He said there were no other casualties and the name of the soldier was being withheld pending notification of family.
In the northern city of Mosul, 16 people in the crowd of about 1,300 protesters were wounded in the attack, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with news media. US and Iraqi forces continue to battle Al-Qaeda and other insurgents in Mosul, where economic and political problems persist. The issues are complicated by Kurdish-Arab tensions in the city.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack on the Mosul demonstration, the local police officer said.
The rally was one of several throughout Iraq yesterday to protest the Israeli attacks and demand a strong response from Arab governments.
Also yesterday, police in Fallujah said a bomb exploded on the outskirts of the city, killing two civilians and wounding four others.
