Five Iraqis arrested over Basra car bombings
Police have arrested five Iraqis believed to be linked to al-Qaida and suspected of being involved in the Basra suicide bombings.
The men led police to a stash of 20 tons of explosives, a police intelligence chief said.
The arrests came two days after suicide attackers set off car bombs outside police stations and a police academy in the Shiite-majority southern city of Basra, killing 74 people.
Among the dead were at least 16 children whose school buses were incinerated by the blast as they passed one of the stations.
Five car bombs were used in Wednesday’s attack, and two more explosive-laden vehicles were seized before they could be detonated. Police were now looking for at least one more car bomb somewhere in the city.
A group of Iraqis captured with the car bombs seized after the attacks led police to the cell, police said.
In yesterday’s raids, police captured two men in a truck carrying 3.5 tons of TNT in Basra’s Faihaa neighbourhood, then arrested the other three in a house where a ton of explosives, along with mortar shells and rockets were found, police said.
The men led police to another house where police found 20 tons of explosives, TNT, mortar shells, rockets and artillery shells.
The five confessed to working with a Syrian connected to al-Qaida who travels between Iraq and neighbouring Kuwait, police added. They said they had prepared a total of eight car bombs for use in Wednesday’s attacks.
The vehicles used in the attacks were stuffed with explosives and rockets, police said.
Wednesday’s blasts were the bloodiest attack in Basra, which has largely been spared the insurgent violence seen elsewhere in the country.
Basra’s governor, Wael Abdel-Latif, accused al-Qaida of carrying out the attack, but British officials responsible for security in the area said the terror network’s role was not certain.
