Beneficiaries from U.S. presence are behind recent bombings – IAF

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The parties that are behind the recent bombings in Baghdad and other provinces are those who benefit from the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq, a spokesman for the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front (IAF) said on Thursday. “The transfer of power between previous and current provincial councils has offered a good chance for terrorist cells to be active during this interval,” Saleem al-Juburi told IraqiNews.com news agency. According to the status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) signed between the Iraq and the United States, the U.S. forces are to withdraw to agreed positions by the end of June 2009 and to fully pull out of Iraq in late 2011 at the most. “Al-Qaeda was not completely eliminated. The group is present but not as strong as it used to be,” said Juburi, adding “the laxity of security agencies to deal with this situation is unjustifiable. On threats by Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the leader of al-Qaeda network in Iraq, to the sahwa (awakening) tribal fighters and the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), Juburi pointed out that these threats were not new and are sheer “propaganda”. Muhajir, who is also known as Abu Ayub al-Masri, has led al-Qaeda in Iraq in succession of Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. raid in June 2006 in the province of Diala, northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The Baghdad Operations Command (BOC) had earlier on Thursday said that its forces arrested Abu Omar al-Boghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq, in Baghdad’s al-Rasafa intersection. The State, announced to have come into being in October 2006, is composed of seven armed organizations, including al-Qaeda in Iraq. The group is active in central and western Iraq provinces. AmR (S) 1