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Najaf bomb detainees -- two Arab nationals, two Iraqis
Governor says detainees Wahhabis, confessed to bombing.
NAJAF, Iraq - The suspects detained by police in connection with the Najaf bombing are two Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's fallen regime and two Arab nationals, described as Sunni Muslim radicals, Najaf Governor Haidar Mehdi Matar said on Saturday.
"Two were Iraqis from Basra, who belonged to the former regime, while the other two were Arab Wahhabis," Matar said. "They confessed to the bombing."
Wahhabi is a byword for those subscribing to the puritanical vision of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror group.
Matar said the four were apprehended by a crowd minutes after Friday's blast outside the Tomb of Imam Ali, one of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam, in which prominent cleric and politician Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim and 82 others were killed.
Another 125 were wounded in the attack.
"People in the street thought they looked bizarre, captured them and handed them to police," Matar said.
The attackers communicated by mobile phone in the minutes before they detonated two cars packed with explosives.
"The explosion occurred at 2:10 pm (1010 GMT) when a mini bus and another car were detonated by remote control. The vehicles were packed with a total of 700 kilograms (1550 pounds) of dynamite, mortars and hand grenades," Matar said.
The blast ripped through the area at the very moment Hakim, considered a stabilising influence on Iraq, left the mosque compound after delivering his weekly sermon to a sea of faithful.
Earlier, a police source had said all four detainees were foreign Arab fighters and that three others had escaped.
The London representative of Hakim's political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said the arrests lent credibility to suspicions of an alliance between al-Qaeda and veterans of Saddam's regime.
"I suspect there was a collaboration here between al-Qaeda and Saddam's people, as well as in the blasts at the UN headquarters and Jordan embassy (in Baghdad)," said Hamed al-Bayati.
Discussing the three devastating attacks in a short span of three weeks, Bayati said: "They are using new tactics -- car bombings, suicide bombings that have the fingerprints of al-Qaeda.
"But al-Qaeda cannot act alone in Iraq. They must have help from inside. That would be Saddam's loyalists."
The attack came close on the heels of the truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19 and the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in the first week of August.
Governor says detainees Wahhabis, confessed to bombing.
NAJAF, Iraq - The suspects detained by police in connection with the Najaf bombing are two Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's fallen regime and two Arab nationals, described as Sunni Muslim radicals, Najaf Governor Haidar Mehdi Matar said on Saturday.
"Two were Iraqis from Basra, who belonged to the former regime, while the other two were Arab Wahhabis," Matar said. "They confessed to the bombing."
Wahhabi is a byword for those subscribing to the puritanical vision of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror group.
Matar said the four were apprehended by a crowd minutes after Friday's blast outside the Tomb of Imam Ali, one of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam, in which prominent cleric and politician Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim and 82 others were killed.
Another 125 were wounded in the attack.
"People in the street thought they looked bizarre, captured them and handed them to police," Matar said.
The attackers communicated by mobile phone in the minutes before they detonated two cars packed with explosives.
"The explosion occurred at 2:10 pm (1010 GMT) when a mini bus and another car were detonated by remote control. The vehicles were packed with a total of 700 kilograms (1550 pounds) of dynamite, mortars and hand grenades," Matar said.
The blast ripped through the area at the very moment Hakim, considered a stabilising influence on Iraq, left the mosque compound after delivering his weekly sermon to a sea of faithful.
Earlier, a police source had said all four detainees were foreign Arab fighters and that three others had escaped.
The London representative of Hakim's political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), said the arrests lent credibility to suspicions of an alliance between al-Qaeda and veterans of Saddam's regime.
"I suspect there was a collaboration here between al-Qaeda and Saddam's people, as well as in the blasts at the UN headquarters and Jordan embassy (in Baghdad)," said Hamed al-Bayati.
Discussing the three devastating attacks in a short span of three weeks, Bayati said: "They are using new tactics -- car bombings, suicide bombings that have the fingerprints of al-Qaeda.
"But al-Qaeda cannot act alone in Iraq. They must have help from inside. That would be Saddam's loyalists."
The attack came close on the heels of the truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on August 19 and the bombing of the Jordanian embassy in the first week of August.
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