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Saudis in Iraq 'preparing for a holy war'
By Mark Huband in London Published: August 18 2003 19:45

Increasing numbers of Saudi Arabian Islamists are crossing the border into
Iraq in preparation for a jihad, or holy war, against US and UK forces,
security and Islamist sources have warned.
A senior western counter-terrorism official on Monday said the presence of
foreign fighters in Iraq was"extremely worrying".
A statement purportedly from al-Qaeda was broadcast on Monday by the Arab
satellite television channel al-Arabiya. It claimed the al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden and the leader of the Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime
Mullah Mohammed Omar were still alive. But it also asserted that recent
attacks on US forces in Iraq were the work of jihadis.
The focus of concern for US counter-terrorist officials was at first on a
reconstituted Ansar al-Islam, the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group based in
northern Iraq before the war. But US officials have recently acknowledged
the presence of other foreign fighters in Iraq.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, said recent raids, including one
near al-Qaim last month, uncovered fighters"carrying travel documents from
a variety of countries".
According to Saad al-Faguih, a UK-based Saudi dissident, the Saudi
authorities are concerned that up to 3,000 Saudi men have gone"missing" in
the kingdom in two months, although it is not clear how many have crossed
into Iraq.
Saudis who have gone to Iraq have established links with sympathetic Iraqis
in the northern area between Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit, where they have
hidden in safe-houses, a Saudi Islamist source said on Monday


michael k matth

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