Al-Qaida bombing in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — Police and rescue crews sifted through the rubble of a mosque and dozens of flattened mud-brick homes on Sunday looking for survivors of the worst attack in Iraq this year — a truck bombing blamed on al-Qaida that killed 72 people.

Political parties said Saturday's attack against a Shiite mosque near the ethnically tense city of Kirkuk was aimed at destabilizing Iraq, which is slowly trying to return to normal after years of ethnic and religious bloodletting.

The bombing, which wounded 163 people, came as U.S. troops have been withdrawing from Iraqi cities as part of a security agreement that requires all troops to leave the country by the end of 2011. There are concerns that violence will spike after U.S. troops fully pull out of the cities by a June 30 deadline.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called for calm and said there will be no delay in the U.S. withdrawal. He warned over the weekend that there could be attempts to destabilize the country.

Police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said the death toll from Saturday's attack was so high because most of the 30 homes that were damaged around the mosque were made of mud. The mosque was flattened.

"The operation has al-Qaida fingerprints," he said, adding that an investigation was ongoing. There were conflicting reports about whether the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber or if the truck was booby-trapped.

It took place in Taza, 10 miles (20 kilometers) south of Kirkuk, which is home to about 20,000 people — many of them Shiites from the Turkomen minority.

"It is a quiet town, but al-Qaida targeted it to try to ignite the sectarian sedition in Iraq," said Tahseen Kahaya, a member of the Islamic Turkomen party.

Sunni insurgents and terror groups such as al-Qaida remain active in northern Iraq despite security gains around the country. Tensions have also spiked in the oil-rich area as Kurds seek to incorporate Kirkuk into their semiautonomous region despite opposition by Arabs, Turkomen and other rival ethnic groups.

"There are groups working to inflame the situation in Kirkuk, which cannot be solved without calm and constructive dialogue," the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party said. It blamed the attack on the "the enemies of Iraq and their agents who do not wish to see Iraq as a stable and calm country."

Although violence has dropped sharply in Iraq, daily attacks continue. In northern Mosul, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol on Sunday killed a bystander and wounded three others, police said.

According to an Associated Press count, at least 1,678 Iraqis, civilians and security personnel have been killed since Jan. 1. Although the figure is lower than the 4,809 who died from attacks in the first six months of last year, there have been at least 19 bombings that killed more than a dozen people so far this year.


by the associated press

Poll tells perceptions of Muslims are wrong

LONDON — Joblessness and poverty are a more potent source of tension between Muslims and wider European and U.S. society than religious differences, one of the first major studies of Muslim integration since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said Thursday.


Attacks by Islamic extremists on the U.S. and European capitals such as Madrid and London have sparked debate on whether a failure of Muslims to integrate into Western society has fueled extremism.

But a study of around 30,000 people in 27 countries by the Gallup polling company claims non-Muslims — including the public and lawmakers — have misunderstood the attitudes of most Muslims in the West, stifling attempts to promote understanding.

These Muslims are more patriotic, more tolerant and more likely to reject violence than the rest of Western society believes they are, the study claims. It suggests most European Muslims, for example, are as happy as other Europeans to live alongside people of other faiths and ethnic backgrounds and share broadly similar views with their neighbors.

The study did not produce detailed data on attitudes of American Muslims on this subject.

But Dalia Mogahed, a faith adviser to President Barack Obama, said that in the U.S., Muslims enjoy relatively good relations with the rest of society and suffer less from economic inequality.


by the associated press

Al-Qaida still remains top U.S. Threat

WASHINGTON — The number of terrorist attacks around the world fell by 18 percent last year but rose dramatically in Pakistan, growing in frequency and lethality, the State Department said Thursday.

The department’s annual assessment of global terrorism said al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to be the greatest terrorist threat to the U.S. despite ongoing efforts to disrupt their operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, North Africa, Somalia and Yemen. Terrorist attacks also rose in Afghanistan last year, the report said.

Worldwide terrorist attacks dropped to 11,770 in 2008 from 14,506 in 2007. But the rise of incidents in Pakistan, the report said, reflected "coordination, sophistication and frequency” of bombings by the Taliban and al-Qaida.

It said Iranian-backed violence in Iraq was down, but it accused Iran of sending weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan.


by the associated press