A woman disguised in a man's robes and headdress slipped into a line of army recruits and detonated explosives strapped to her body, killing at least six recruits and wounding 35 -- the first known suicide attack by a woman in Iraq's insurgency.
The attack on Wednesday in Tal Afar near the Syrian border appeared aimed at showing that militants could still strike in a town where US and Iraqi offensives drove out insurgents only two weeks ago. A female suicide bomber may have been chosen because she could get through checkpoints -- at which women are rarely searched -- then don her disguise to join the line of men, Iraqi officials said.
Iraq's most notorious insurgent group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack in an Internet statement, saying it was carried out by a "blessed sister."
The bombing came a day after US and Iraqi officials announced their forces killed the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abdullah Abu Azzam, in a raid in Baghdad over the weekend. His death has not slowed insurgent violence, with at least 84 people -- including seven US service members -- killed in attacks since Sunday.
US President George W. Bush warned violence will increase in the days leading up to a key Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution, a document that has sharply divided Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and the Sunni minority that forms the backbone of the insurgency.
The US military announced on Wednesday that two more American soldiers and an airman were killed in violence and a Marine was killed by a non-combat gunshot. The deaths brought to 1,929 the number of US service members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, an attacker set off an explosion in the home of a bodyguard of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding five, al-Sadr aides and a hospital official said.
In the attack at the Tal Afar army recruitment center, the female suicide bomber was wearing a traditional white dishdasha robe and a checkered kaffiya headscarf -- both worn only by men -- to blend in with the line of Iraqi applicants, Major Jamil Mohammed Saleh said.
She detonated explosives packed with metal balls and hidden under her clothes, Saleh said. Six recruits were killed and 35 wounded, said hospital officials in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.
In a photo of the attacker's head taken by Saleh and shown to reporters, the woman appeared to be in her early 20s with dark eyes, light skin and brownish hair. Saleh said it was not known whether she was Iraqi.
It was the first known time that a woman has succeeded in carrying out a suicide bombing in Iraq since the insurgency began, though it was not the first attempt.
In March, four women, reportedly sent by the insurgent group Islamic Army in Iraq, were caught in a town south of the capital before they could set off explosives belts they were wearing.
General Ahmed Mohammed Khalaf, the regional police chief, said insurgents were exploiting the fact that women are not searched at checkpoints "because of religious and social traditions." Women and children will now be searched at Tal Afar checkpoints, he said.
Still, the attack raised the prospect of more women bombers being used by the insurgency, a tactic difficult to defend against, especially during the referendum. Men and women turned out in large numbers to vote in parts of Iraq during January parliamentary elections, and images of veiled women flashing their ink-stained fingers after voting became an iconic symbol of hopes for democracy.
Major General Hussein Ali Kamal, intelligence head at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said the Tal Afar attack "rings danger alarms" and requires new techniques, including increased searches of women at sensitive locations.
"But this will be a problem, because women are taking part in our new political life and finding large numbers of female security officers to search them is not an easy process," he told reporters.
In the past, women have played only a supportive role in the insurgency, helping smuggle equipment or feed, shelter and give medical treatment to fighters, said Nora Bensahel, an insurgency expert with Rand Corp, a nonprofit research group based in Santa Monica, California.
"This could be a sign that the insurgency is getting greater support among a larger segment of the population, that women are getting more militant and willing to take on a greater role," Bensahel said. "It could also be a sign that the insurgents are having trouble finding male recruits."
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS