Qaeda says kills Egyptian envoy in Iraq

By Peter Graff

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Al Qaeda’s Iraq wing said on Thursday
it had killed Egypt’s envoy to Iraq, captured five days ago in
the first of a series of strikes on diplomats.

“We, al Qaeda in Iraq, announce that the judgment of God
has been implemented against the ambassador of the infidels,
the ambassador of Egypt,” said the group, led by Jordanian Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, in a statement posted on the Internet.

“Oh enemy of God, Ihab el-Sherif, this is your punishment
in this life.”

The group posted a video showing the blindfolded hostage
identifying himself as Sherif, but did not show the killing.

Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba offered condolences
to his family: “If this is true, we totally condemn it, and it
reveals the ugly face of such networks, who are not Iraqis but
come to Iraq to spread chaos and pronounce people ‘infidels’.”

Sherif’s abduction off a street on Saturday was the first
in a series of attacks on diplomats, apparently aimed at
blocking efforts by the new government to obtain the
international legitimacy it craves, especially from cautious
Arab states.

“We were surprised that this happened. We are Muslims and
he was in an Arab country,” said the envoy’s 19-year-old
daughter Anji, who wept as she spoke to journalists in Cairo.
“He told me not to be afraid because Iraq is an Arab country.”

The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier
General Donald Alston, said he believed the attacks were a
reaction to a meeting in Brussels last month at which dozens of
foreign governments rallied round the new administration in
Baghdad.

Days before Sherif was kidnapped, Iraq had announced that
Egypt would make him the first Arab diplomat in Baghdad with
the full rank of ambassador since the invasion in 2003.

Washington and Baghdad have urged diplomats not to pull
out, but strikes on them may have rattled some embassies.

Pakistan withdrew its ambassador from Baghdad on Tuesday
after his motorcade was attacked by gunmen. Bahrain’s envoy was
shot in the hand in his car in an apparent kidnap attempt.

An earlier Qaeda statement threatened more such strikes.

“This will be the fate of ambassadors of the tyrannical
states because Jihadist Iraq today is not secure for infidels
… and America cannot protect itself, let alone others.”

DEAL WITH IRAN

Iraq did achieve a diplomatic breakthrough on Thursday with
its non-Arab, Shi’ite neighbor, Iran.

Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi signed a pact in Tehran
agreeing to accept Iranian military training and other
cooperation with the country that Iraq fought for nearly a
decade under ousted leader Saddam Hussein.

Responding to the suggestion that warming ties with Iran
would anger Tehran’s arch-foe Washington, Dulaimi said: “Nobody
can dictate to Iraq its relations with other countries.”

Zarqawi’s guerrillas are Sunni Muslim Arabs, allied with
Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents against the new Shi’ite- and
Kurdish-led government in Baghdad, although many Iraqi Sunnis
reject their extreme violence and foreign influence.

U.S. and Iraqi leaders hope that a rift in the insurgency
will bring more Iraqi Sunnis into politics.

A double car bomb attack killed at least 13 people and
wounded 27 overnight in Mashru, near the mainly Shi’ite town of
Hilla south of Baghdad, in the worst bombing attack for several
days, Polish forces in the area said. Locals blamed al Qaeda.

“Only Shi’ites are targeted,” Raad Hadeed Salman, a
witness, shouted amid an angry crowd at the scene of the blast.

“There were no police here, no Americans and no army
soldiers. Zarqawi is targeting only Shi’ites.”

In Mosul in the north, where Kurds and Arabs have feuded
for control, some 12 mortars aimed at a local government
offices fell into a crowded neighborhood of shops. Hospital
sources said at least 46 people were injured and three
confirmed killed.

Iraqi Sunni Arab groups took their biggest step into the
political process on Wednesday, with 15 Sunni delegates joining
the committee to draft a new constitution.

The American military said it was holding five U.S.
citizens, apparently including a Los Angeles filmmaker, among
more than 10,000 detainees in Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Salem Uraiby in Mashru and Maher
al-Thanoon in Mosul)