[NYTr] "Qaeda" changing tactics in Iraq's Diyala: US general

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[As Juan Cole explains, most of the insurgents the US is calling
"alQaeda" are Sunnie Baathists who at one point accepted the help of
Saudi fundamentalists, but have now largely broken with them. But al
Qaeda Bush propaganda must have. So the Ba'athists are now called 
"al Qaeda." The labels are a matter of convenience, and even if the US
were not being dishonest, the poor fools wouldn't know one faction or
group from another in Iraq anyway. -NYTransfer]

Reuters - Dec 8, 2007
http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-12-08T123336Z_01_L08647786_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-IRAQ-COL.XML

Qaeda changing tactics in Iraq's Diyala: U.S. general

By Alaa Shahine

Baghdad - A spate of recent attacks in Iraq's volatile Diyala province
indicate a change in tactics by al Qaeda rather than an upsurge in
violence, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said on
Saturday.

North of Diyala, police said at least eight people were killed in what a
Reuters witness said was a suicide car bomb attack in the oil refining
city of Baiji.

Religiously and ethnically mixed Diyala has become one of the
epicenters of violence in Iraq after Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other
fighters were squeezed out of western Anbar province, Baghdad and other
areas by security crackdowns this year.

At least 61 people have been killed and 90 wounded over the past week in
five major bombing and shooting attacks in the province, which spans the
Tigris and Diyala Rivers and spreads east to the Iranian border.

"As far as an upsurge in attacks, we have not seen that," Major-General
Mark Hertling, commander of forces in northern Iraq, told Reuters in an
e-mail.

"What we have seen is some instances of different types of attacks," he
said, referring to the use of suicide vests and "desperate" attacks
against neighborhood police units which the military calls "concerned
local citizens."

On Friday, a woman wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16
people in Diyala's town of Muqdadiya in an attack against former Sunni
Islamist insurgents who had joined security forces to fight al Qaeda, a
rare attack by a female suicide bomber.

About 10 Iraqi troops were killed in another attack north of Muqdadiya
later on Friday, security officials said.

Violence across Iraq has fallen by 55 percent since an additional 30,000
U.S. troops became fully deployed in mid-June.

The growing use of the concerned local citizens' groups, pioneered in
Anbar province last year by Sunni Arab tribal sheikhs tired of al
Qaeda's indiscriminate killings, have also been credited for sharp
falls in violence.

"Additionally, because of reduced attacks in other areas, the attacks in
Diyala province may appear to be more than what existed in the past,"
Hertling said.

"But the bottom line is that (al Qaeda in Iraq) and other extremists
continue to try and affect the security situation in Diyala province ...
Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces ... will continue to pursue
them there and in the other northern provinces," he said.

U.S. forces commander General David Petraeus has said that al Qaeda
remained a formidable enemy that would continue to try and mount
large-scale attacks.

An al Qaeda-linked militant group issued a threat earlier this week
vowing a wave of car bomb attacks and strikes against Iraqi security
forces.

In Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, 40 people were also
wounded in an attack witnesses blamed on a suicide car bomb at the home
of an anti-terrorism official.

A Reuters television cameraman said at least 11 cars were destroyed and
15 houses damaged by the blast. The cameraman, who lives nearby, said
he heard the blast at 7:15 a.m. (0415 GMT) when a vehicle drove up and
exploded.

Most of the victims were neighbors in houses that were also damaged. The
counter-terrorism official, Colonel Ali Shaker, was among the wounded,
the cameraman said.

In southern Iraq, a local leader of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr's movement was killed, along with his wife and two children, in
an explosion at his home which police said could have been caused by a
bomb.

A six-month ceasefire ordered in August by Sadr for his feared Mehdi
Army militia has also helped bring down violence, officials say.

(Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Charles Dick)

) Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.