the suicide driver who took a lorry loaded with explosives into the United Nations compound which killed its top envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other people last August, the Guardian newspaper reported Saturday, July 10.
Its website said it had obtained a video tape which attempts "to glorify several suicide bombers who have died in Iraq over the past year", including Abu Farida al-Masri, described as Egyptian, who had a history of violent attacks.
"On his return from Italy he ran several operations against filthy Egyptian Coptic Christians, who were specializing in removing the virginity of Muslim women," the Guardian quoted the tape as saying.
HEAD OF CHRISTIAN
Abu Farida also was said to have told friends later he had a dream that "God will give me the head of a Christian". "The tape then says that the dream came true with the killing of Mr. de Mello with the use of a lorry containing several tons of explosives, the Guardian reported from Baghdad.
The UN building was full of "agents", it claims, but he was specially targeted because the top UN envoy "had been used like a surgeon’s scalpel to cut East Timor from Indonesia and cut up Yugoslavia, and the [UN] wanted to cut Iraq into pieces also".
Human rights organizations have expressed concern about growing Muslim violence towards Christians in especially countries like Iraq and Egypt, where Coptic girls have reportedly been kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam.
CHRISTIAN SHOPS ATTACKED
In Iraq, north of the capital Baghdad, insurgents blew up three liquor stores in Baqouba, prompting concern Islamic militants may be trying to impose their strict interpretation of Islam there, The Associated Press (AP) quoted witnesses as saying. Liquor stores are often owned by Christians, and several of them have been killed since last year, BosNewsLife learned.
Insurgents also slashed the throat of a translator working for American forces in Kirkuk, the latest of a series of assaults on professionals supporting the multinational forces here, AP said. The body of Hewah Omar, 28, was reportedly dumped by the side of a river that flows through the middle of the city.
Saturday’s blasts killed a passing taxi driver, Dr. Nassir Jawad from Baqouba General Hospital told AP. Elsewhere United States marines came under fire in Ramadi, part of the so-called Sunni Triangle and the site of frequent clashes with coalition forces, the military told AP. Marines counter attacked and at Ramadi’s hospital, a child caught in the crossfire moaned in agony, Associated Press Television News showed.
HOSTAGES FATE UNKNOWN
Meanwhile, the fate of a captured Filipino worker and two Bulgarian truck drivers were unknown. President George W. Bush called his Bulgarian counterpart, Georgi Parvanov, but reportedly "offered to assist but refused to negotiate with terrorists."
A Pakistani truck driver who returned home after being held hostage here said Saturday he watched as three fellow captives were beheaded. Amjad Hafeez, 26, said he was taken to a room where two foreigners and an Iraqi were killed with a sword, however Bulgarian officials dismissed reports that the two he saw die were Bulgarians.
