IRAQ: U.S. GENERAL SAYS SUICIDE BOMBER CAPTURED IN BAGHDAD HAS SYRIAN PASSPORT.

Record ID: 358525

  • Title: IRAQ: U.S. GENERAL SAYS SUICIDE BOMBER CAPTURED IN BAGHDAD HAS SYRIAN PASSPORT.
  • Date: 28th October 2003
  • Summary: (EU) BAGHDAD, IRAQ (OCTOBER 27, 2003) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. WIDE OF BRIEFING 2. (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) IRAQI DEPUTY INTERIOR MINISTER AHMED KAZEM IBRAHIM SAYING: "One of the terrorists was headed to 'New Baghdad' station in an attempt to blow it up. We captured him. His car was laden with TNT explosives and ready to explode since it was connecte
  • Embargoed: 12th November 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BAGHDAD, IRAQ
  • Country: Iraq
  • Reuters ID: LVAA5UNP45BDMUW63XA4KUPONHKP
  • Story Text: U.S. general says one attacker captured alive in
    suicide bombings had a Syrian passport.



    Foreigners are suspected to be behind Monday's
    (October 27) suicide bombings in Baghdad that killed 34
    people and wounded dozens others, a U.S. general and an
    Iraqi police chief said.

    "He is a foreign fighter, he had a Syrian passport and
    the policeman who shot him claims that as he was shot and
    fell that he said that he was a Syrian," Brigadier General
    Mark Hertling of the U.S Army 1st Armoured Division
    Hertling told a news conference.

    Hertling said police shot and wounded the man when he
    got out of a car and tried to hurl a grenade at a Baghdad
    police station. The car carried three mortar rounds and was
    packed with TNT, he said.

    Iraq's Deputy Interior Minister Ahmad Ibrahim said the
    wounded attacker was now unconscious in hospital.

    Hertling said suicide attacks were not typical of
    supporters of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, though
    they have been blamed by the U.S. military for most of the
    guerrilla attacks troops and other targets in post-war
    Iraq.

    Thirty-four people were killed, including eight police
    officers, in suicide attacks on three other police stations
    and the Red Cross headquarters, Ibrahim said. Another 224
    people were wounded, 65 of them police.

    One of the bombers, driving an Iraqi police car and
    wearing a police uniform, was admitted to a police compound
    before blowing himself and the station up, Hertling said.

    Hertling described the attacks as co-ordinated but said
    the co-ordination was not very sophisticated, extending no
    further than a decision by the various attackers to set off
    their bombs between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.





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