October 25, 2004

Zarqawi's al-Qaeda Group Behind Iraq Massacre

Many of my readers try to equivocate between what was done at Abu Ghraib and what Zarqawi does. After all, isn't making guys pleasure themselves and humiliating them in front of girls the same as shooting 50 people in the back of the head? The Age:

Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has escalated the Iraq insurgency crisis by claiming responsibility for the massacre of more than 50 members of the Iraqi national guard.

Zarqawi's group, Jamaat al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad [note: Zarqawi has officially changed his group's name to 'Al-Qaida's Jihad Committee in Mesopotamia'], said on an internet site that it had carried out the apparently execution-style killings. The bodies of at least 51 new recruits were found on a remote road in eastern Iraq....

Iraqi officials said the national guard victims, who had just finished three weeks' training at the Kir Kush military base near the Iranian border, were ambushed on Saturday evening at a bogus checkpoint between Balad Ruz and Qazaniya in Diyala province, 80 kilometres north-east of Baghdad...

A senior defence ministry official, Brigadier Salih Sarhan, said the soldiers, who were unarmed and wearing civilian clothing, "were ordered from their buses by men in police uniforms, told to lie face down on the ground, and then shot in the back of the head". He said the attack appeared to have been well planned and indicated the growing confidence of insurgents in the restive Sunni Triangle.

Evan F. Kohlman confirms that Zarqawi's group was behind the massacre. The entire translated communique can be found here. Here is an excerpt:
Several sons of Al-Qaidaā€™s Jihad Committee in Mesopotamia have succeeded in killing 48 corrupt heads, members of the pagan Iraqi guard, as a group of them was departing the Kirkush training camp located between the cities of Balad Ruz and Mandali in the eastern part of the country. [They were] en route to the southern part of the country on vacation in four vehicles, numbering a total of 48 apostates. Allah enabled the mujahideen to kill them all, and [the mujahideen] stole two vehicles and the salaries that the soldiers had just received from their masters, praise be to Allah for his blessing.ā€¯

By Rusty Shackleford, Ph.D. at 12:19 PM | |