BAGHDAD, 27 January 2008 — A security chief for Sunni tribesmen who rose up against Al-Qaeda in Iraq said yesterday that the devastating explosion in the northern city of Mosul earlier this week was spearheaded by a band of foreign fighters under the sponsorship of Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, son of Muammar Qaddafi.
Col. Jubair Rashid Naief, who also is a police official in Anbar province, said the Anbar Awakening Council had alerted the US military to the possible arrival in Mosul of the Seifaddin Regiment, made up of about 150 foreign and Iraqi fighters, as long as three months ago. The US military did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment about Naief’s claim.
“They crossed the Syrian border nearest to Mosul within the last two to three months. Since then, they have taken up positions in the city and begun blowing up cars and launching other terror operations,” Naief told The Associated Press in an interview.
The so-called Anbar Awakening Council is a grouping of Sunni tribes in the western province that last year turned against Al-Qaeda and began working with US forces. The council is credited with the sharp drop in violence in the former insurgent redoubt.
The movement has since been spread by Americans through Baghdad and surrounding districts. That and the introduction of 30,000 additional US troops by mid-2007 are seen as the main factors in the recent decline in violence in the country.
Naief did not explain why the younger Qaddafi would be sponsoring the group of fighters. Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahri has harshly criticized his father accusing him of being an enemy of Islam.
In an audiotape last fall, Zawahri threatened a wave of attacks against Libya because it improved relations with the US
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Parliament’s move to adopt a new, temporary national flag has provoked an outcry, with one city refusing to fly it and ordinary Iraqis attaching the old flag to their cars in a silent protest.
Iraqis have flooded chat rooms on the Internet with criticism of this week’s decision, which had long been demanded by the country’s Kurdish minority who say the Saddam Hussein-era banner was a reminder of his brutality.
Many Iraqi Arabs disagree. They see the old flag as having little to do with Saddam, a Sunni Arab, but as one under which countless soldiers died fighting for in various wars. “It’s shameful. Thousands of Iraqis lost their lives so this flag could fly ... Changing the flag ignores their sacrifice,” said one Iraqi in a comment posted on an Arab chat room. The new flag is very similar to the old one.
It is still red, white and black, but three green stars in the center representing unity, freedom and socialism, the motto of Saddam’s now outlawed Baath party, have been removed. The phrase Allah-o-Akbar (God is Greatest), added in green Arabic script on Saddam’s orders during the 1991 Gulf War, remains, but no longer in his handwriting.
Officials in Fallujah, a city in western Anbar province and once a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold, rejected the new flag.
“This is a disaster ... I am using the old flag in my office and at home,” the mayor of Fallujah, Saad Rasheed, told Reuters, adding he would raise the new one only if the Anbar provincial council told him to.
The US-backed Al-Hurra television station yesterday said the Anbar provincial council would not fly the new flag, but Khamis Ahmed, a senior member of the body, denied the report.
