Iraqis arrest 19 with terror ties in mosque blast

NAJAF, Iraq — Police have arrested 19 men — many of them foreigners and all with admitted links to al Qaeda — in the car bombing of a mosque in the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf that killed 85, a senior Iraqi investigator said yesterday.

Two Iraqis and two Saudis grabbed shortly after Friday’s attack on the Imam Ali shrine gave information leading to the arrest of the others, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Those arrested include two Kuwaitis and six Palestinians with Jordanian passports. The remainder are Iraqis and Saudis, the official said, without giving a breakdown.

Initial information shows the foreigners entered Iraq from Kuwait, Syria and Jordan, the official said, adding that they belong to the rigid Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam.

“They are all connected to al Qaeda,” the official said.

Wahhabism is the strict, fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam from which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden draws spiritual direction. Based in Saudi Arabia, its followers show little tolerance for non-Wahhabi Sunnis and Shi’ites. Wahhabism was banned in Iraq by ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Najaf bombing, the worst attack in Iraq since the U.S.-led campaign to topple Saddam began in April, killed 85 persons, including a top Shi’ite cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. Hospital officials said higher tolls — 107, according to one account — were reduced after some deaths were found to have been reported twice.

Police pointed to similarities between the mosque bombing and two recent attacks.

The bomb at the Imam Ali shrine — the burial place of the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad — was made from the same type of materials used in the Aug. 19 truck bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which killed 23 persons, and the Jordanian Embassy vehicle bombing Aug. 7, which killed 19, the Iraqi official said.

In the shrine attack, 1,550 pounds of explosives were planted in two cars, the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite broadcaster reported, quoting the Najaf governor. The U.N. bomb was about 1,000 pounds.

The FBI said the U.N. bomb was built from ordnance left over from Saddam’s regime, most of it made in the Soviet Union. Many explosives were wired together, including a 500-pound Soviet-era bomb, the agency said.

U.S. officials have not confirmed any details of the arrests in Najaf, which would substantiate Bush administration claims that bin Laden’s followers have taken their Islamic militant war against the West to Iraq, where U.S. forces are struggling to maintain security.

The arrested men claimed the recent bombings were designed to “keep Iraq in a state of chaos so that police and American forces are unable to focus” on the country’s porous borders, which foreign fighters are said to be crossing, the Iraqi official said.

American authorities have not taken an active public role in the mosque investigation because of Iraqi sensitivity to any U.S. presence at the Najaf shrine, the most-sacred Shi’ite shrine in Iraq and the third holiest in the world after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

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