BAGHDAD – Iraqi police have arrested a Sunni anti-Qaeda militia leader and his aide over three car bombings outside the shrine city of Karbala that killed 45 people, a top general said on Friday. The two men, who were not identified, were arrested overnight in the village of Al-Hamiyah in Babil province south of Baghdad.
They are suspected of direct involvement in three car bombings, one of them by a suicide attacker, against Shiite Muslim pilgrims on their way to Karbala on Thursday. “We arrested a Sahwa commander in Al-Hamiyah along with his aide,” said Major General Nohman Dakhil, the commander of police rapid response forces across the country.
The Sahwa (Awakening) are a collection of Sunni tribal militias who turned against Al-Qaeda and began siding with the US military from late 2006, turning the tide of the insurgency that threatened to engulf Iraq. The Sahwa leader “works for the Islamic Army, and was directly involved in the Karbala attack,” Dakhil added, noting that his forces would arrest another “target” later on Friday.
The Islamic Army is a Salafist group that includes former officers from now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s army. It first appeared in 2004 and has kidnapped foreigners and carried out grisly beheadings. Describing the militia leader arrested on Friday, Dakhil said: “He is a criminal — he had one foot in terrorism, and one foot in the state.”
The three car bombs on Thursday went off around 20 minutes apart on the outskirts of Karbala, according to Imad Mohammed Hussein, spokesman of Karbala governorate. One was a suicide attack at the city’s northern entrance, followed by the detonation of two vans packed with explosives about 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Karbala.
The attacks left 45 dead and up to 150 wounded, as hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims descended on the city for Arbaeen ceremonies, held to mark 40 days since the anniversary of the death of the revered seventh century Imam Hussein.
