Al-Qaeda in Iraq claims responsibility for ministry assault

PanARMENIAN.Net - Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq has claimed a brazen coordinated attack involving a series of bombings and the storming of a ministry complex in central Baghdad, a monitoring service said on Sunday, March 17, according to Al-Bawaba.

The group, the Islamic State of Iraq, claimed to have killed up to 60 people, the U.S.-based SITE Monitoring Service said.

Security and medical officials told AFP that 18 people died in the March 14 attack near Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which is home to several government buildings as well as the American and British embassies.

The attack was the latest to raise questions about the capabilities of Iraq’s security forces, just days before the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of the country and weeks ahead of its first elections in three years.

Last week, the al-Qaeda Iraqi group claimed an attack on a convoy in west Iraq that killed 48 Syrian soldiers and nine Iraqi guards, in a statement posted on jihadist forums on Monday.

The soldiers had entered Iraq for medical treatment and were being transported through the western province of Anbar on their way back to Syria when the attack took place on March 4, according to the Iraqi defense ministry.

Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has long warned that Syria’s increasingly sectarian war might spill over the border and reignite his own country’s combustible Shi’ite-Sunni mix.

Suicide bombers have already stepped up attacks in recent weeks to a frequency Iraq has not suffered in years.