IRAQ: A letter purporting to come from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network denied any role in Tuesday's anti-Shia Muslim explosions in Iraq and blamed the attacks on the United States.
The letter, signed by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades with "al-Qaeda" in parenthesis, was sent to the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. The newspaper has previously received similar letters from the same brigade in which they claimed responsibility for a November bombing of two synagogues in Turkey and the August bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
"US troops have committed a massacre against the innocent Shia people to set sectarianism ablaze among Iraq's Muslims," the letter said. "We, and with God as our witness, say we are innocent of this act and of anything that will drive the Shia away. Our mujahideen [holy warriors] love God and his prophet and will not do anything that will harm the Iraqi people."
The attacks on the mass gatherings in Kerbala and Baghdad made Tuesday the bloodiest day since US troops toppled Saddam Hussein in April.
Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council blamed the blasts on Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who Washington says works for al-Qaeda and whom it accuses of trying to fuel chaos in Iraq. Some Shia clerics said the attacks were the work of Sunni Muslim extremists who want to foment a civil war in Iraq, where the Shia are a majority.
But in the letter, the Abu Hafs brigades said they only target "Crusader Americans and their lackeys, the Iraqi police".
"We also strike at the agents of America in the council of infidels (Governing Council) and all the other allies it uses to hit at the mujahideen," it added.
The letter also called on the people of Iraq to wage war against their US occupiers and urged them to keep away from areas frequented by the "infidels and apostates".