Al Qaeda owns triple Baghdad bombings

BAGHDAD - An umbrella Islamist group that includes Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing has claimed responsibility for Monday’s triple car bombing that killed 38 people in central Baghdad, a monitoring service said Wednesday.

In a message posted to Islamist websites, the Islamic State of Iraq called the coordinated car bomb attacks near hotels popular with visiting foreign businessmen and journalists “the fourth wave” of its “Invasion of the Captive” campaign, the US-based SITE monitoring service said.

The umbrella group also claimed responsibility for similar bombings in central Baghdad in August and October that together killed 255 people, injured more than 1,000, and badly damaged the Iraqi ministries of finance and foreign affairs.

After Monday’s bombings, Baghdad military spokesman Qassim Atta blamed the attacks on “remnants of the former regime”.

Hours before, al-Forat television, the station of the influential Shiite party the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, had come to the same conclusion.

“Saddamist, Baathist gangs commit another series of crimes against the Iraqi people,” it reported on its news ticker, in a sign of the rancour that has marked Iraqi politics in the weeks ahead of the March elections.