Tehran, June 01: Iraqi security forces said on Monday they had arrested two suspected al Qaeda militants for the January bombing of three Baghdad hotels in which 36 people died.
A spokesman for the Baghdad security command described the two men — Abbas Najim al-Jawari, 26, and Mohammed Nuri al-Abadi, 32 — as leaders of the Sunni al Qaeda network.
Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi said they were accused of “supervising” the bombing of three well-known hotels in Baghdad on Jan. 25. Abadi is also accused of running an assassination squad targeting police officers and government officials.
Jawari was arrested on April 16 and Abadi on May 1 as part of an ongoing operation codenamed “Lion’s Leap”, he said. The operation resulted in the killing last month of al Qaeda’s top two leaders in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.
“Operation Lion’s Leap continues to strike a strong blow at the al Qaeda leadership,” Moussawi told a news conference.
Overall violence in Iraq has dropped sharply since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, but the insurgency unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion remains entrenched in some areas and bombings and shootings are still a regular occurrence.
Moussawi said Abadi was an assistant to Abdullah Azzam al-Qahtani, who is being held in Baghdad and who spoke this month of “an idea” to attack the June 11-July 11 World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa.
Separately, an Iraqi army source said military intelligence officers on Monday shot dead the chief suspect in the May 24 killing of politician Bashar Mohammed Hamid al-Aqidi, elected to parliament in March for the cross-sectarian Iraqiya alliance.
Responding to a tip-off, officers raided a restaurant in the restive northern city of Mosul and killed Ziyad Mahmoud when he pulled a gun and resisted arrest, the source said. He described Mahmoud as a member of al Qaeda.
—-Agencies