Al-Qaida has been recruiting women for suicide attacks because they can pass police checkpoints easier than men by concealing explosives under an abaya, a loose, black cloak that conservative Muslim women wear. Suicide bombers have been Al-Qaeda’s most lethal weapon in Iraq, killing hundreds of civilians and members of Iraq’s security forces.
The killing of the young woman was discovered when security forces, searching for her on suspicion she had ties to Al-Qaeda, raided her father’s home Thursday outside the former Sunni-insurgent stronghold of Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, said Maj. Ghalib Al-Karkhi, a police spokesman in Diyala province.
The father, Najim Al-Anbaky, was detained during the raid, and during questioning he told police he had killed his daughter, Shahlaa, a month earlier because he found out she intended to blow herself up in a suicide attack for Al-Qaeda, Al-Karkhi told The Associated Press.
Al-Anbaky showed police what he said was the woman’s grave, Al-Karkhi said. The father remains in custody and is under investigation, but no charges have been made yet. He was not immediately available for comment.
Another police official said authorities were investigating the possibility that the woman had a boyfriend in Al-Qaeda. The official said that according to local police records, the man killed a sister in 1984 in what was described as an honor killing.
A senior Iraqi army official said authorities, acting on a tip that the daughter was going to blow herself up, pulled the father in for questioning, at first not knowing that the daughter was dead.
The father at first denied his daughter had any links to the terror group, but after further questioning admitted to killing her. He described it as an attempt to protect the family’s dignity and said his daughter had been recruited by Al-Qaeda to be a suicide bomber.
The official said authorities dug up the body as part of the investigation. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A female suicide bomber was behind one of the deadliest attack this year in Iraq, after she blew herself up among Shiite pilgrims Baghdad in February, killing 54 people.
Meanwhile, a Shiite militia leader, his wife and three children were killed Friday in a bomb attack on their home south of Baghdad.
The early morning blast leveled the militia leader’s home in Haswa, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of the capital, Babil province police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid said. The blast also wounded four people.
A local policeman, Abdul-Salam Al-Maamouri, identified the dead man as a commander in the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr. The militia terrorized Sunni neighborhoods during the height of Iraq’s sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, and its fighters have been targets of retribution.
Also Friday, in the northern city of Samarra, 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Baghdad, two masked gunmen attacked three members of the interior ministry in a market. One official was wounded and managed to escape, another was shot and killed after getting out of the vehicle and the driver was killed while sitting inside the car, a police officer said.
The gunmen then burned the vehicle with the driver’s body still inside before making their escape, the officer said.
He did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
An official at the Samarra hospital, Dr. Rabie Muhsen, confirmed the incident.
