Posted on 01/03/2005 8:28:46 AM PST by Straight Vermonter
CAIRO - The suicide bomber who killed 22 people when he blew himself up in a US mess hall in Mosul, Iraq, was a Saudi medical student, an Arab newspaper reported Monday.
Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat identified him as 20-year-old Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi, citing unnamed friends of the man’s father. The friends said members of an Iraqi resistance group contacted al-Ghamdi’s father to tell him his son was the suicide bomber who carried out the Dec. 21 attack, the deadliest on an American installation in Iraq.
The Associated Press was unable to reach Saudi security officials for comment despite several phone calls on Monday.
The US-led coalition that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has faced fierce resistance, most of it carried out by Saddam loyalists or Iraqi nationalists. Some of the deadliest attacks, though, have been blamed on foreign Muslim extremists.
US officials have said their preliminary investigation indicates the bomber was dressed in an Iraqi military uniform - but was not an Iraqi soldier - when he slipped into a mess tent packed with soldiers eating lunch in northern Iraq.
The father refused to discuss the suicide bombing, but told the newspaper his son had gone to Iraq to fight the Americans and had died there. The family held a mourning ceremony the paper said. It did not say when the ceremony was held or where in Saudi Arabia the family lived.
The paper did not name the Iraqi resistance group. But Ansar al-Sunnah, a radical Islamic Iraqi group that has been active in northern Iraq, claimed responsibility for the mess hall attack. In a videotape posted on the Web, Ansar al-Sunnah identified the suicide bomber as Abu Omar al-Musali - an apparent nom de guerre meaning Abu Omar of Mosul.
The man identified as Abu Omar al-Musali appeared in the Web video wearing an explosives-laden vest, but did not speak. Another man, speaking in an Iraqi accent, described how the operation had been planned. A subsequent segment showed what appeared to have been the attack.
Ansar al-Sunnah shares the anti-Western, Quranic rhetoric of Islamic extremist groups like Al Qaeda, but has confined its fight to Iraq and has not actively recruited foreign fighters. The group, though, has declared that it worked with an Al Qaeda branch in Iraq on at least one operation, in November.
Asharq al-Awsat said al-Ghamdi started studying medicine in Sudan when his father worked and lived there. Al-Ghamdi stayed to complete his studies when his family returned to Saudi Arabia, the paper reported, without saying when the family left.
It said the father said he learned Dec. 16 that his son had withdrawn all the money left in a Sudanese bank account for him and later received a phone call from his son telling him that he was in Iraq to fight the Americans.
The al-Ghamdis are a large Saudi clan. Three al-Ghamdis were among the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Saudi Arabia has launched a crackdown on militants that started after terrorism was brought home with an alleged Al Qaeda attack on three residential compounds in Riyadh in May 2003. The kingdom also has been under pressure to ensure Saudi militants do not cross its border into Iraq.
Read this already much earlier.
Proud parents.
These people are disgusting.
Kill'em. Kill'em all.
So, these creeps are still only "militants," ay?
I say they're pagans and there are most certainly terrorists.
Their attitudes definitely are not conducive to a stable country and by being willing to carry out such attacks they forfeit their right to human life. Hence I agree.
mc
George Bush's idea of "pressure" to stop border crossings, is now legendary.
There are no 20 yr old "Medical Students", LOL
At best, their hero might have done 2 yrs of what might have become the 4 yr pre-med curriculum/degree required to even apply to a medical school.
***The al-Ghamdis are a large Saudi clan. Three al-Ghamdis were among the Sept. 11 hijackers.***
Sounds like that clan of Al-Ghamdis needs to perish from this earth. Wonder how many of them live in the US
First,I will do no harm.......
Obviously, this kind of terrorism will not be conquered by throwing money or sending peace corps volunteers to the region. We have to be able to break the hold these fanatical mullahs' have over the region, the mullahs who encourage and condone this reprehensible behavior.
More proof that education and the giving of our money will put an end to this sick ideology.
Fundamentalist "Islam" was born in Saudi Arabia, and they've nutured and supported it all these years. It is time we moved south from Iraq into SA to put an end to it, once and for all. The pampered, limp-wristed House of Saud will do nothing more than pay lipservice. Without SA funding and backdoor support, this movement will die on the vine, and likely take Syria and other rotten States with it.
Only 4 listed in the whitepages. One of them is a Texan.
I'm glad people repeat articles, I would have missed it otherwise.
Without a particular knowledge about this student, I can't tell whether or not he was a med student.
You are forgetting that that applies to believers only, we are infidels and infidels are not even humans.
Isn't it interesting that the suicide bomber was a "medical student" He was 20 and in his second year of school. What kind of Mickey Mouse medical schools do they have in the Arab countries that has you a 2nd year medical student when in the USA you would still be 2nd year student in undergraduate school. Now wonder they are so stupid.
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