Iraqi police arrest Al Qaeda-linked suspects over Karbala bombing(AFP)23 December 2004
KARBALA, Iraq - Karbala police said Thursday they have arrested five Iraqis and one foreigner linked to the Al Qaeda network who confessed their involvement in Sunday’s deadly bombing in the Iraqi Shiite shrine city.
“Five Iraqis and a foreigner were arrested in the last two days and they confessed their involvement in the attack and their links with Al Qaeda,” said police spokesman Rahman Meshawi.
Fourteen people were killed and dozens wounded when a car bomb exploded in a bus station in Karbala in the second deadly attack there in less than a week.
Meshawi said police recovered “weapons, documents and videos proving these people have links with Al Qaeda,” but he refused to reveal the nationality of the non-Iraqi.
During interrogation, the men admitted they had “two accomplices from Arab Gulf countries and police are actively looking for those two people,” Meshawi said.
The arrests signaled that Saudi-born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group has an “active cell” in Karbala, Meshawi said.
Iraqi Shiite and political leaders blamed the twin bombings of Karbala and the pilgrimage city of Najaf Sunday that killed a total of 66 people and wounded nearly 200, on radical Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be Al Qaeda’s point man in Iraq.
More than 50 people have been arrested in Najaf in connection with the bombings.
However, after previous attacks in the Shiite shrine cities, mass round-ups by the police have yielded little fruit and failed to lead to those responsible for bombings.