MUSLIM MOTHERS WANT TO MURDER YOU!
Female suicide bomber kills 38 in Baghdad
The explosion was at a crowded checkpoint where Shiite Muslim pilgrims were on their way to a shrine.
By Usama Redha and Kimi
Yoshino
January 5, 2009
Reporting from Baghdad --
As Shiite Muslim pilgrims made their way to a shrine in Baghdad on Sunday to
mark one of the sect's most important holidays, a female suicide bomber
detonated her explosives at a crowded checkpoint, killing as many as 38 people
and wounding 72, police said.
It was one of the capital's worst attacks in months and the second major bombing
in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya in nine days. On Dec. 27,
a minibus exploded, killing 24 people.
Violence in Iraq has
declined significantly, but suicide attacks remain a threat. U.S. military
officials have warned that January could be particularly violent, with
provincial elections Jan. 31. Insurgents also might try to assert themselves as
the U.S. hands over military control to Iraqis. Withdrawal of all American
troops is planned by the end of 2011.
On Sunday, witnesses described a chaotic scene of dozens of dead and injured
men, women and children, most of them on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Musa al
Kadhim, considered the seventh imam of the Shiite sect. Thousands of pilgrims
are visiting the holy site to mark Ashura, the anniversary of the battlefield
death in 680 of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.
Ashura, which falls on Wednesday this year, is a defining event in the Shiite
faith. Militants have targeted Kadhimiya repeatedly because of its significance
to Iraq's Shiite majority.
At least 17 pilgrims from
Iran, which also has a Shiite majority, were among the victims Sunday, police
said.
"I saw the people lying on the ground," said Assad, who declined to give his
last name. "They were like sheep more than human. Is that acceptable? Oh, my
God."
Heider abu Hussein, 32, who owns a bookstore near the site, said the bomber
exploded from the middle of a crowd, sending people and body parts flying
everywhere.
"Can anyone help us? Can anyone help us?" Hussein's friend Mohammed yelled into
the crowd. "We need help here!"
The friends began carrying people to safety. Hussein spotted an infant, maybe 2
months old, lying on the ground and crying.
"Then I saw his mother," Hussein said. "She was moving in pain. She started to
point at me. She couldn't speak. In her gesture, she was telling me to give her
baby back. Then she collapsed. I thought she was dead."
The baby began vomiting blood and was bleeding from the stomach, where he had
been struck by shrapnel. At a hospital, the friends learned that the baby's
mother was alive but seriously injured.
Relatives were able to take care of the baby, Hussein said.
As police quickly cleared the scene and washed away the blood, angry residents
criticized officials.
"The security procedures absolutely are not good," said Abu Zainab, 61, who
carried injured people from the scene in handcarts. "The narrow streets of
Kadhimiya are not secured. Anyone can enter the city easily."
Abu Zainab said he tried to get a police officer to help him immediately after
the bombing but the officer refused, saying he had not been given such orders.
"I took off my shoes and I hit him with it," Abu Zainab said.
Some blamed lax checkpoints, reporting that they had seen officers and soldiers
playing with their cellphones. Residents said the military had set up a couple
of main checkpoints but several other entrances were easy to pass through.
"Every year, the people of Kadhimiya take the responsibility of protecting the
holy city," said Heider Fahad, 22, owner of a nearby cellphone shop. "But this
year, the army and the police did not let the civilians participate in this
searching. There are a lot of entrances, and someone who wants to commit such
activities can enter the holy city. It was a breach."
Qassim Atta, an army spokesman in Baghdad, said in a statement that security
procedures in Kadhimiya were being followed. The senior U.S. military commander
in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker issued a statement
blaming the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq for the attack and warning that the
group remained a threat.
Ali Adeeb, a Shiite lawmaker with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Islamic Dawa
Party, called for tighter security in Baghdad but denied that hard-line Sunni
groups were making a comeback.
"Security has improved, but there was some negligence and carelessness by the
security leadership," Adeeb said.
Hamas is using women to murder innocent civilians!
Muslim women are murdering innocent civilians!
By GARETH HARDING
UPI Chief European Correspondent
BRUSSELS, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- What drives a white, middle-class woman from provincial Belgium to strap explosives around her waist and blow herself up in front of a U.S. troop convoy in central Iraq? The question has dominated Belgian newspapers -- and disturbed security officials -- since the identity of Europe's first female suicide bomber was revealed last week.
"This is our Belgian kamikaze killed in Iraq," screamed a headline on the front-page of La Derniere Heure newspaper, above a picture of an attractive, long-haired woman in her late 30s.
"This is very shocking for Belgians," says Claude Moniquet, a Brussels-based terrorism expert. "It took several days for the news to sink in. They simply don't understand how this could happen."
Belgians are used to reading stories about jihadist groups -- 13 Islamist terrorists are currently on trial in Brussels for being members of an organization linked to the recent Madrid and London bombings -- but what particularly horrifies locals about their homegrown jihadist fighter is that she came from such a "normal" background.
Muriel Degauque was born 38 years ago in Monceau-sur-Sambre, a small town near Charleroi in a coal-mining area known as the black country. Her mother, a hospital secretary, and her father, a retired factory worker, still live in the small red-brick house where Degauque was brought up a good Catholic girl. According to reports in the Belgian media, she had an "absolutely normal childhood -- she was well-dressed, well-behaved and went to Mass."
Then, in her late teens, things started to go pear-shaped. She fell in with a gang of bikers, dabbled in drugs and saw her brother killed in a motorbike accident when she was 20. "She has the classic profile of a convert to Islamic jihadism," Moniquet told United Press International. "She had a drink or drug problem when she was young, had several run-ins with the law, was not close to her family and was often unemployed. People like Degauque use Islam to sort out their own problems. They always say that with Islam they find a real family for the first time in their lives."
According to Edwin Bakker, a Dutch terrorism expert at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, it is hardly surprising that Degauque turned to radical Islam after meeting an Algerian man. "All the studies show that suicide bombers are people who are seeking a new purpose in life."
When the former bakery salesgirl met and married Issam Goris, a Belgian man with a Moroccan mother, she began to immerse herself in Islam, learning Arabic, reading the Koran and moving to Morocco for a brief spell. Friends and family became worried when she appeared at her parents' house wearing a head-to-toe robe and refusing to sit in the same room as her father at mealtimes. "The religion was totally ingrained in her. She only lived for that," her mother Liliane told France's Le Parisien newspaper, describing her daughter as "more Muslim than Muslim."
Bakker says that many Islam converts' sense of estrangement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because of their decision to reject their past lives and beliefs. "Converting to a religion which is perceived by many as 'evil' or an 'enemy religion' can lead to social isolation and the loss of friends and family."
Cut off from her family, living in a run-down part of Brussels near the city's main train station and exposed to radical jihadist thinking through her husband, Degauque set off for Iraq by car with Issam in August. On Nov. 9, she detonated a bomb belt in an attempt to blow up a convoy of American troops on a road 30 miles north of Baghdad. One American soldier was wounded and the Belgian was fatally injured in the attack. On the same day, her husband Issam was shot in the head by American troops in another botched attack.
There have been European suicide bombers before -- most notably in the July 7 terrorist attacks on London -- but never a female kamikaze. Security officers and experts fear there will be more deadly strikes as the number of converts to Islam increases. A recent report drawn up for the Dutch parliament revealed that 10,000 Dutch citizens have converted to Islam and that 10 percent of radical Muslims switched to the religion. Another study drawn up by French intelligence services shows that one third of converts to Islam have criminal records.
"Islamist terror organizations particularly prize converts," wrote Middle East expert Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun Tuesday. "They know the local culture and blend in. They cannot be deported. They can hide their religious affiliation by avoiding mosques, lying low, even drinking alcohol and taking drugs to maintain their cover. One guide counsels would-be suicide bombers going to Iraq to 'wear jeans, eat doughnuts, and always carry your Walkman.'"
Moniquet says there is another reason converts are so valuable to jihadist groupings: "The fact that people from Christian backgrounds join the jihadist cause proves to them that the Jihad is the right way."
Muriel Degauque may have the dubious distinction of being Europe's first female suicide bomber, but she will probably not be the last.
3 women held in Iraq suicide bomb plots
August 6, 2008
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi security forces arrested three women, accusing them of plotting suicide bombings against the country's armed forces, the Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN on Wednesday.
Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf said the women were arrested last week as part of the military offensive in Diyala province, the territory that sprawls north and east of Baghdad.
Khalaf said two of the women "tested positive for explosives residue" and explosives were found in another's house. He did not say precisely where or when they were seized. He said the women confessed to planning attacks.
Women are increasingly carrying out suicide attacks in Iraq. Male security forces will not search women and few women have been trained to conduct searches.
Up to 24 suicide attacks in Iraq have been commited by female bombers in 2008 -- up from eight in 2007 -- according to U.S. military figures.
The military offensive in Diyala, called "Omens of Prosperity," began in the provincial capital, Baquba, where security forces have imposed a curfew and are encircling the city.
In addition to recent suicide bombings in Diyala, two central Baghdad roadside bombings on Wednesday wounded six people, according to the Interior Ministry.
The U.S. military said troops targeting al Qaeda in Iraq in the central and northern parts of the country on Wednesday detained three wanted men and several other people.