Iraq's First Female Suicide Bomber Strikes

[XXPANTHAXX]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A woman strapped with explosives blew herself up outside an Iraqi army recruiting center in a northern town Wednesday, killing at least six people and wounding 30 in the first known attack by a female suicide bomber in the country's bloody insurgency.


The attack in Tal Afar, where U.S. and Iraqi forces routed militants in a major offensive two weeks ago, demonstrated the difficulty of maintaining security in the towns in the large northwestern region stretching to the Syrian border, where insurgents are most active.

The woman, disguised as a man in traditional robes, was standing in line with applicants to join the Iraqi army at the first of three checkpoints outside the center when she detonated explosives hidden under her clothes and packed with metal balls, said Maj. Jamil Mohammed Sadr in Tal Afar.

It was the first known instance that a woman has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq. In October 2003, a female bomber was caught trying to enter a government building in Baghdad before she could detonate her explosives.

Saddam Hussein's regime used female bombers at least once during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, when two women blew up a car at a checkpoint near the city of Haditha, killing three American soldiers days before the April 2003 fall of Baghdad.

Sadr said all the dead and wounded in Wednesday's attack were army recruits.

The blast occurred in Tal Afar, 95 miles east of the Syrian border, and it highlighted the difficulty of maintaining security in the large northwestern region stretching to the border, where insurgents are most active.

Iraqi authorities claimed nearly 200 suspected militants were killed and 315 were captured in the Sept. 8-12 offensive in Tal Afar. But U.S. and Iraqi troops discovered later that many had slipped away, some through a network of tunnels.

Most of the forces that participated in the offensive have withdrawn, although U.S. troops maintain a base and outposts in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

"Due to the security vacuum after the withdrawal of (Iraqi) police commandos from Tal Afar, the terrorists came back again," said Abbas al-Bayati, a parliament member and an ethnic Turkman — a community with a large presence there.

The blast was similar to an attack a day earlier in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where a man strapped with explosives blew himself up in a police recruiting center, killing nine.

A U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb at the town of Safwan on Iraq's border with Kuwait on Wednesday, the military said. It also announced that a Marine near the western city of Fallujah was killed by non-hostile gunfire Monday.

The deaths brought to 1,920 the number of U.S. troops who have died since the Iraq war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Soon after the Tal Afar offensive, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born, Sunni Arab leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq insurgent group, declared all-out war on Iraq's majority Shiites.

On Tuesday, Iraqi and U.S. forces announced they had killed al-Zarqawi's deputy, Abdullah Abu Azzam, in a weekend raid on a high-rise apartment building in Baghdad. The coalition called Abu Azzam the mastermind of an escalation in suicide bombings that have killed nearly 700 people in Baghdad since April and said he was the financial controller for foreign fighters who entered Iraq to join the insurgency.

Al-Qaida in Iraq issued an Internet statement denying Abu Azzam was its deputy leader, calling him "one of al-Qaida's many soldiers" and "the leader of one its battalions operating in Baghdad." The statement confirmed the Baghdad raid but said it was not certain whether he was killed.

Government spokesman Laith Kubba warned that insurgents likely would carry out revenge attacks for Abu Azzam's death. He said the militant "was supervising on a daily basis almost all the attacks that happened (in Baghdad) ... He was fully responsible for preparing and sending the car bombs that killed hundreds of innocent Iraqis."

With the Tal Afar blast, at least 72 people have been killed this week.

In southern Iraq, police found the badly decomposed bodies of 22 Iraqi men shot to death and dumped in a field, many of them bound and blindfolded, police Lt. Othman al-Lami said.

He said the victims appeared to have been killed more than a month ago and their identities were not immediately known. The district — northeast of Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad — is mostly Shiite.

[Nesayem]

Brother Pantha,
How long do you expect before we see this over here on our shores?

[XXPANTHAXX]

It is my hope the Sisters along with the Brothers will move when the People say its time...

[Nubian]

i'm really surprised that there haven't been more females doing it.The suicide bomber phenomena is something the west just hasn't fathomed!In the west people just don't think its a viable resistance strategy..but it has been working for decades!And it frankly strikes fear into the minds of westerners.

If such operations started being conducted on u.s. soil?? OMG! it would be absolute chaos! look what two men did in a car with a hole in the trunk and a few rifles..(john allen muhammad) the authorities didn't know what the hell was going on..

[Jahness]

Greetings Everyone!

Their are a few female suicide bombers actually. It may be these
are to first to have been successful at the given mission.

I know once before a couple of the women got arrested before they
could carry out the mission. I will see if I can find a supporting
article on that particular situation.

XXPANTHAXX, both men and women have to be about the job of
liberating our people, and we must do what we have to do to make
it successful.

Peace!

[Jahness]

Four female suicide bombers arrested, 15 beheaded bodies found in Iraq
SEC-IRAQ-ARRESTS-BODIES

BAGHDAD, March 8 (KUNA) -- Four female suicide bombers have been arrested in Baghdad this morning, sources at the Iraqi interior ministry announced on Tuesday.

The source told KUNA the four ladies belonged to the so-called "Islamic Army in Iraq" and were trying to attack a number of government buildings and checkpoints in the Alexandria area using explosives wrapped around their bodies.

Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, the Iraqi army announced Tuesday that 15 beheaded corpses, mainly of women, were found at the Hattein military base. Captain Mohammad Al-Saedi told reporters today that a number of visitors to the Shia sites in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala have been reported missing and the bodies found today are believed to belong to them. Also, the Iraqi police have found two bodies today one of an Iraqi police officer and the other of an Iraqi interpreter. Other five Iraqi soldiers were killed today when a car-bomb blew up near a checkpoint on the road to Karbala city, according to Defense ministry sources. (end) mhg.
ad

KUNA 082225 Mar 05NNNN

http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.as...en&DSNO=711686