Al Qaeda defends killings
The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq has defended the killing of "innocent Muslims" in suicide bombings against U.S. forces, saying it was legitimate under Islam for the sake of holy war, according to an audio tape attributed to him on Wednesday.

"The killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom" has been "sanctified by many scholars even if it means killing innocent Muslims," the speaker, said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said on the tape posted on an Islamist Web site. "This legality has been agreed upon," he added, "so as not to disrupt jihad."

The Jordanian militant, Washington's biggest foe in Iraq, quoted Muslim scholars to justify the loss of Muslim lives in suicide attacks in Iraq. His message appeared aimed at winning Sunni Muslim support for the insurgency.

The speaker on the tape said protecting religion was more important than protecting Muslim lives, honor or wealth. The shedding of Muslim blood "is allowed in order to avoid the greater evil of disrupting jihad," he added.

The authenticity of the tape could not be verified, and it was not clear when it was recorded.

More than 400 people have been killed in an escalating cycle of violence and suicide attacks since a new Iraqi government was named late last month. Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for most of those attacks.

The speaker said it was crucial to step up suicide attacks to weaken his enemy's modern military might. "These operations are our lethal weapons against the enemy.

"God knows that we were careful not to kill Muslims and we have called off many operations in the past to avoid losses," it added.

"But we cannot kill infidels without killing some Muslims. It is unavoidable."

The speaker said Muslims killed unintentionally in such attacks were "martyrs who died for Islam."

The speaker also assailed the Shiites, calling them "rejectionists who fought alongside the worshipers of the cross and spearheaded every war" against Sunnis.

Sunnis in Iraq lost power to the county's majority Shiites after the U.S.-led war toppled Saddam Hussein.

Insurgents in Iraq, meanwhile, gunned down a senior Interior Ministry official Wednesday, and the bodies of seven men shot in the head were found outside Baghdad.

A senior U.S. military official, who told reporters he did not want to be identified, said the recent surge in violence could be attributed to a meeting in neighboring Syria about a month ago by lieutenants of Zarqawi, who may have attended.

The meeting was held to try to ramp up terrorist attacks, particularly suicide car bombings, throughout Iraq, the official said.

He said there had been 21 car bombings in Baghdad during May, compared with 25 such attacks in the capital in all of 2004.

At least 11 more Iraqis were killed Wednesday in a string of incidents in Baghdad and to the north of the capital, security officials said.

Four members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in a suicide car bomb attack against a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy near the northern town of Baiji, Captain Ali Yusef said.

Two civilians, an Iraqi soldier and a contractor working on a military base in the restive town of Dulawiya, further south, were killed when mortar rounds were fired on the compound.

In the northern city of Mosul, a large group of gunmen attacked a police academy, sparking an intense gunbattle in which one civilian was killed and three others were wounded, including a child and woman, the police said.

A police investigator with the rank of general was assassinated in Baghdad and his wife was wounded, while an army captain was killed by a bomb planted under his vehicle near Balad, security and medical officials said.

In nearby Dujail, the bodies of four Iraqi truck drivers were found.

They had been working for a company contracted by the U.S. military, an army officer said.