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The United States is seeing a sharp drop in the number of foreigners entering Iraq to become al Qaeda suicide bombers, according to intelligence and Bush administration sources. An administration official and a military adviser to Iraqi commanders attribute the decline to a fairly new phenomenon: Al Qaeda's call for mass killings in the name of Islam is losing some of its appeal with young Arabs in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, where most of the bombers originate. The decline also parallels the battlefield losses al Qaeda has suffered in the past 12 months in Iraq's Anbar province and the...

 Two Testimonies by Young Men Who Went to Wage Jihad in Iraq Two testimonies by young men who went to Iraq to wage jihad were published recently. In the first testimony, a young Saudi named Ahmad bin 'Abdallah Al-Shayi' said that he regretted his actions, and accused Al-Qaeda of exploiting young men by tempting them to join the organization and then sending them to carry out martyrdom operations. He warned all young men, and Muslims in general, to learn from his mistake, and not to join the jihad in Iraq or in other regions of conflict. The second testimony...

More than 40% of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq to join the insurgency in the past year were citizens of Saudi Arabia, America's key partner in the Middle East, according to detailed information seized from a camp used by them. Documents and computers found by the US army at Sinjar, on the Iraqi-Syrian border, revealed that the other single largest group came from Libya, which is now being rehabilitated as a reliable western ally. [snip] US military officials believe that 90% of such bombings are by foreigners. The captured data has been described as an intelligence treasure trove that...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2007 – A top al Qaeda leader who coordinated efforts of foreign terrorists in Iraq was killed this week, a senior official in the region announced today. (Video) A photo released by Multinational Corps Iraq officials of foreign al Qaeda leader Abu Usama al-Tunisi, who was killed Sept. 25 in an air strike on a building south of Baghdad. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Abu Usama al-Tunisi, a foreigner who brought al Qaeda terrorists into Iraq, was killed Sept. 25 in an air strike on a building south of Baghdad where he was...

Fewer Foreigners Crossing Into Iraq From Syria to Fight Drop Parallels Dip in Al-Qaeda Attacks By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 16, 2007; Page A19 The number of foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria has decreased noticeably in recent months, corresponding to a similar decrease in suicide bombings and other attacks by the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials. "There is an early indication of a trend," said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, in an interview. Border crossings from Syria that averaged 80 to 90 a month have...

Osama bin Laden urged sympathizers to join the "caravan" of martyrs as he praised one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Al-Qaida traditionally issues a video every year on the anniversary, with the last testament of one of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. This year's video showed hijacker Waleed al-Shehri addressing the camera and warning the U.S.: "We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left." The new...

TEHRAN, Aug 25 (MNA)-- Hundreds of Iraqis residing in the U.S. converged in the front of the Saudi embassy in Washington on Friday condemning Riyadh’s policy towards Iraq, Sotaliraq said on its website. With slogans “Down with Terrorism” and “Shia and Sunni Should Unite in Iraq,” demonstrators called for the immediate halt to Saudi support for terrorism in Iraq and the issuance of “takfiri” religious decrees (fatwas) by Saudi scholars. Nazar Heydar, the director of Iraq information center in Washington and a member of the international center for campaign against terrorism, said “by this demonstration we meant to draw the...

The Sunday Times June 04, 2006 British brigade of Islamists join Al-Qaeda foreign legion in Iraq David Leppard UP TO 150 Islamic radicals have travelled from Britain to Iraq to join up with a “British brigade” that has been established by Al-Qaeda leaders to fight coalition forces. Senior security sources say leaders of the Iraqi insurgency have set up a “foreign legion” composed entirely of westerners to fight alongside the insurgents in the war against British and American forces. Some are preparing to carry out suicide attacks while others have received basic combat training for attacks on western troops The...

German authorities may have thwarted suicide bomb attacks in Iraq by German women. According to intelligence sources, three women were prevented from travelling to Iraq after one of them had announced she planned to blow herself up in Iraq. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that German intelligence agencies have prevented three German women from travelling to Iraq in recent weeks. The women, who have close contacts to the Islamist scene in Germany and at least one whom has converted to Islam, came to the attention of intelligence agencies after one of them had announced on an Internet site that she intended...

An Iraqi daily is claiming that a "staggeringly high" proportion of foreign jihadis arrested in Iraq are Iranian. al-Taji, a newspaper with close connections to the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud Barzani, noted that 1,577 of the 1,972 jihadis arrested since last May were Iranians. Al-Taji, quoting a commander of the Iraqi border guard speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the other foreign militants arrested included nine Nigerians, four Indians, 364 Afghanis, two Pakistanis and one Russian citizen from Dagestan in the northern Caucasus. The Bush administration has consistently maintained that Iran is covertly sending fighters into neighboring Iraq, a...

Rumsfeld: Iranian revolutionary forces are infiltrating Iraq. They will find this to be an “error of judgment. ”Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to rejected suggestions Iraq was in civil war, accusing the media of exaggerating the violence. But he acknowledged that the 22 February attack on the Shiite mosque had delayed efforts to form a national unity government. The ruling Shiite alliance asked President Jabal Talabani to push off opening parliament next Sunday to allow more time to resolve a stalemate over formation of a national unity government. Kurdish and Sunni Muslim politicians refuse to...

Iranian Martyr Recruitment Website: Coalition Forces In Iraq Be Warned –Iranian Martyr Forces on Alert to Move In The Iranian reformist Internet daily Rooz reported on March 2, 2006 that "the Iranian martyrdom-seeking [i.e. suicide] forces have launched a website, http://www.esteshhad.com/index.php , called 'To Die as a Martyr,' [1] and have declared an alert among the Iranian martyrdom-seeking forces." The following are excerpts from the Rooz report: [2] "Thousands of Young Martyrdom-Seeking Iranians are Counting the Minutes Until They Can Give Their Souls" "The website of the Iranian martyrdom-seekers began its operations by declaring an alert amongst the Iranian martyrdom...

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq - Soldiers with 1st Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division conducted a targeted raid in Ar Ramadi against a foreign insurgent cell suspected of operating in the provincial capital. The intelligence attained by the Iraqi soldiers led to the capture of 15 suspected insurgents, 11 of which are identified as Syrian nationals and the remaining four as Iraqis. The raid took place at a factory in the Tameem district of Ramadi at about 1 p.m. today. The foreign insurgents surrendered to the Iraqi soldiers and were taken for further questioning; 36 AK-47 assault rifles were also taken in...

Until recently, many analysts in American government agencies saw the threat of women suicide bombers as a largely theoretical problem. Their best judgment was that "Al Qaeda Central" -- the close-knit organization around Osama bin Laden and ideologue Ayman Al-Zawahiri -- would resist any effort to use women as homicidal martyrs. What changed? The simplest answer is that Al Qaeda's core organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan and its avant-garde in Iraq need more recruits. Jordanian researcher Hassan Abu Hanieh, who knew Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi personally, says the terrorist leader is goading Muslim men. Before the attacks by women began, a...

Saudi state-run Channel One TV broadcasted the first episode of a new series aimed at dissuading young Saudis from following in the footsteps of many of their contemporaries to join the jihad (holy war) earlier this week. “Jihad Experiences, the Deceit” is a five part series which will tell the stories of several young Saudis who left to Iraq to fight alongside Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Zayd Asfan, Abdullah Khoja and Walid Khan narrated their journey from ordinary Saudi youth to mujahideen and discussed the recruitment and brainwashing techniques used by al Qaeda. At the end of the program, Channel...

AIN EL-HILWEH, Lebanon, Nov 28 (Reuters) - On a quiet autumn night, a mosque loudspeaker shatters the silence in this poor Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. "With all pride and grace, we announce to you the martyrdom of our mujahideen brothers Mohamed Ahmed al-Kurdi and Nidal Hussein Mustafa in the battlefields of jihad in Iraq," the speaker blares across the narrow streets of Ain el-Hilweh. The deaths brought to three the number of residents from the camp killed in Iraq in November alone, making a total of five in the past four months. Arab fighters have played a key role...

Baghdad, Oct. 29 – More than 20 Iranians attempting to cross into Iraq illegally were arrested near the border, according to an Iraqi television channel. A report aired by the al-Sharqiya TV on Thursday said that Iraqi security forces in the eastern province of Diyala had “arrested 21 Iranian nationals penetrating Iraqi soil in the border city of Mandali”. It reported that an official who had asked not to be identified by name said, “The elements that have infiltrated Iraq are enjoying the support of Iran's Revolutionary Guards”.

Some 312 foreign nationals, including one American, have been captured while taking part in the insurgency in Iraq since April of this year, a senior American military commander said Thursday. Gen. Rick Lynch, the spokesman for American forces, said most of the foreigners captured were from Egypt, where 78 prisoners were from; followed by Syria, with 66; Sudan, 41; and Saudi Arabia, with 32. The rest of the detainees come from 23 different countries, most of them predominantly Muslim nations, but also some European ones like Britain, Denmark, France and Ireland. The American in custody, they said, was of Arab...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Foreign al Qaeda militants waging a campaign of suicide car bombings in Iraq plan to send some fighters home in preparation for similar operations in their own countries, the Iraqi interior minister said on Sunday. Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said documents found with Abu Azzam, said to be a lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, signalled a plan to send foreign Arab Sunni militants back home to widen the battlefield beyond Iraq. "We got hold of a very important letter from Abu Azzam to Zarqawi asking him to begin to move a...

Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jaber reportedly said Sunday there were 1,000 foreign fighters in his country. Jordan's al-Arab al-Yawm daily quoted Jaber as saying al-Qaida organization in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was planning to "transfer its war from Iraq to neighboring countries." The minister added the Iraqi authorities seized a letter from Abu Azzam, al-Qaida's second-in-command who was killed in Iraq last month, to al-Zarqawi, in which he called for moving the foreign fighters from Iraq to neighboring countries to avoid a possible blow and setback in Iraq. Jaber said he believed that "terrorism will move to...