muslim fanatic animals at it again - 50+ dead

Yo costic.......your mates led by their mad mullahs setting a fine example.

50-plus killed in truck blast
From correspondents in Iskandariya, Iraq
February 10, 2004

A SUSPECTED suicide truck bombing killed at least 50 people today outside a police station south of the Iraqi capital in one of the deadliest attacks since US-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein last spring.

The suspected suicide bombing came after news that US forces detained one of the remaining most-wanted members of the former dictator's regime and US officials spoke of a "credible" plot linked to al-Qaeda to foment civil war in Iraq.

A Toyota pick-up truck exploded in Iskandariya, 45 kilometres from Baghdad, as hundreds of people queued outside the police station to fill in applications to join the force, police Lieutenant Hussein Sani said.

"I believe it was a suicide bombing," Colonel Doug Mubari of the US 82nd Airborne Division told AFP at the scene of the blast, which also left more than 65 wounded.

"One of the messages I want to convey is that the people who did that, I don't know who, are attacking innocent people. The target was not the police," Mubari argued.

As in past such attacks, there was no claim of responsibility.

But the al-Qaeda terror network was a prime suspect in twin suicide bombings in the northern city of Arbil earlier this month that killed at least 105 people and an attack on the coalition headquarters in Baghdad that killed 24.

US officials say techniques used in recent attacks point to an increasing al-Qaeda involvement, particularly the use of suicide bombers.

Iskandariya hospital chief Razzak Jabar Janabi said his facility had received 50 dead and 29 wounded, while others had been transferred in critical condition to hospital in Hilla, capital of the province of the same name.

Mohammed al-Tai, director of Hilla hospital, spoke of another five dead, while his and a third hospital received 38 injured.

The attack coincided with a festival drawing tens of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims to the holy city of Najaf, just a day after US officials warned of what they described as a plot to spark a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war in Iraq.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, said a 17-page memo gave "some credence" to US pre-war charges of links between Osama bin Laden's terror group and Saddam's regime.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of ties to al-Qaeda, is suspected of being the author of the memo, which US officials in Baghdad say details a plot that could "tear the country apart".

"We take the threat seriously," Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the coalition deputy operations chief, said in Baghdad.

"There is clearly a plan on the part of the outsiders to spark civil war, commit sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in society."

Powell said of the letter: "It certainly lends, I think, some credence to what we said at the UN last year, that (Zarqawi) was active in Iraq in doing things that should have been known to the Iraqis" before the invasion.

The claims were made as defence officials in Washington announced the arrest of Muhsin Khadr, a former Baath party chairman. Number 48 in the US military's Iraqi most-wanted "deck of cards" list, he was turned over to US forces at the weekend.

In Baghdad, a United Nations team sent to Iraq to assess whether early elections are feasible met today with international elections experts and members of civil society, including women, a UN spokesman said.

"We're progressing in accordance with our plans," Ahmed Fawzi said.

"We're having 18 hours a day of back-to-back meetings."

UN chief Kofi Annan has said he hopes to be able to report conclusions of the election study mission by the end of February.

Fawzi said the team had enlarged the scope of its meetings to include members of civil society and political figures not represented in the US-appointed interim Governing Council "to get a broader view."

The UN delegation arrived here Saturday to assess the feasibility of holding elections before a June 30 deadline to hand over power from the coalition to a transitional Iraqi authority.

The coalition argues it is impossible to arrange a fair and democratic vote in a country suffocated by decades of dictatorship and lacking the necessary electoral infrastructure.

But the spiritual leader of the Shi'ite majority community, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has challenged their plans for a transitional assembly selected by regional caucuses, and has been calling for early direct elections instead.

Meanwhile, as Washington and London continue to parry criticism over their grounds for going to war, a former senior British military official has said Prime Minister Tony Blair's government raised "false expectations" about Iraq's pre-war weaponry.

"Personally I don't think they will find stockpiles in Iraq and (people) have been given a false expectation that they were there," Brian Jones told the Independent daily.

Jones was in charge of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff until January 2003.

Saddam's refusal to give up his alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction was cited by Blair as the main reason to invade Iraq alongside the United States last March.

For his part, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov, said yesterday the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq before the war had reinforced the credibility of the United Nations.