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By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 25 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents signaled the fight is still on after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death, posting an Internet video Saturday showing the beheading of three alleged Shiite death squad members in revenge for killing Sunnis.

The video — as grisly as any the al-Qaida in Iraq leader issued — was clearly designed to quash hopes that the Sunni-dominated insurgency might change tactics by ending attacks on Shiite civilians and institutions, especially the police.

Fellow Sunni insurgent groups sent condolences for al-Zarqawi in Internet messages Saturday and warned Sunnis not to cooperate with the Iraqi government, an apparent call for unity three days after U.S. forces killed the terror leader in a targeted airstrike.

The condolence statements came from the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sunnah — the group that posted the beheading video on a militant Web site — and the head of the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of five insurgent groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq, that al-Zarqawi helped found last year.

"Iraq is the front defense line for Islam and Muslims, so don't fail to follow the path of the mujahedeen (holy warriors), the caravan of martyrs and the faithful," said Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi, the Shura Council's head.

He vowed: "As for you the slaves of the cross (coalition forces), the grandsons of Ibn al-Alqami (Shiites), and every infidel of the Sunnis, we can't wait to sever your necks with our swords."

Across Iraq, at least 24 people were killed in violence Saturday — including a number of sectarian attacks.

Gunmen stopped a minivan carrying Sunnis on a highway near Baghdad, ordered the passengers off and opened fire, killing four and wounding one. In Baghdad, gunmen in two cars shot dead a Shiite metal worker and wounded two others. Also in the capital, a roadside bomb exploded in the mainly Shiite Karadah area, targeting a police patrol; five people were killed and 14 wounded, including three officers.

In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen killed three Shiite butchers.

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi was the defining face of Iraq's insurgency. His tirades against the nation's majority Shiites and calls on the once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs to rise up and kill them were matched by the killing of thousands of Shiites in attacks.

In contrast, Ansar al-Sunnah has largely refrained from killing civilians. Made up mostly of homegrown Iraqi guerrillas, the group instead has mostly gone after American and Iraqi forces as well as Iraqis and foreigners employed by the U.S. military.

It was the first known footage of beheadings to be posted by any insurgent group in months, and possibly timed to make clear to the U.S. and Iraqi governments that there will be no change in tactics even though al-Zarqawi is gone.

With its gruesome killings and militants chanting "Allahu Akbar", or "God is Great," the 15-minute video illustrates the depth of Shiite-Sunni rivalries.

It shows three men in military uniform, sitting on the ground with their hands bound behind their backs in a small concrete room with gunmen standing around them.

Under questioning, the men say they are members of the "Wolf Brigade," a special Iraqi police commando unit that Sunnis accuse of being a front for Shiite militiamen who kill Sunni Arabs.

Text in the video says the three were part of a "Shiite death squad" that kidnapped and killed Sunnis at checkpoints south of Baghdad in March and April. It says they were among 10 police commandos captured by Ansar al-Sunnah last month.

A militant off-camera asks them about the incident and other alleged slayings of Sunnis. The men reply in low voices, looking terrified. One mostly stares with his mouth hanging open.

"They (the Sunnis) were beheaded by those who took and detained them," one of the three says. Next the video shows the three captives lying on the ground outdoors. A militant sharpens a knife before he, with the help of others, beheads the men one by one.

At the end of the tape, the group warns Iraqis against joining the security forces: "Otherwise, you will live in terror until we eliminate you and your fate will be in hell."

Iraqi and U.S. leaders have acknowledged that al-Zarqawi's killing was not likely to stop the insurgency, now in its fourth year. But they hoped it would rob his supporters of an iconic figure around which they rallied.

The U.S. military has moved quickly to take advantage of the power vacuum left by al-Zarqawi's death, carrying out at least 56 raids since Wednesday's airstrike pulverized his hideout in a remote village northwest of Baghdad.

A search of the destroyed safe house yielded documents and electronic storage devices, all being assessed for potential use against his followers, a U.S. military officer has said.

Investigators also found documents and unspecified "media," which the officer indicated usually means information storage devices such as computer hard drives and digital cameras. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because the search results have not been formally announced.

At the scene of the airstrike, a floral-pattern pillow, a torn mattress, sandals, and a red blanket lay scattered among the debris of concrete blocks and twisted steel, according to Associated Press Television News footage.

An air conditioner and part of a washing machine also could be seen in the area, where ripening pomegranates hung from a remaining tree. Pieces of women's clothing also were found in the rubble.

Beside al-Zarqawi, the airstrike also killed his spiritual adviser, two men, two women and a girl estimated between the ages of 5 and 7.

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Many in terrorists' 'next generation' dead
By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 9, 3:35 PM ET

MADRID, Spain - They rose up quickly to take up Osama bin Laden's call for jihad, ruthless men in their 20s and 30s heralded as the next generation of global terror.

Two years later, 40 percent are dead, targets of a worldwide crackdown that claimed its biggest victory with the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's front man in Iraq.

Manhunts in Asia, Africa and Europe have pushed most of the rest deep underground — finding refuge in wartorn Somalia or the jungles of the southern Philippines. While there are still recruits ready to take up al-Qaida's call to arms, analysts say the newcomers have fewer connections than the men they are replacing, less training and sparser resources. "There are more people popping up than are being put away," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College. "But the question is whether the new ones have the fortitude to take up the mantle and carry the struggle forward. I don't see that they have."

A 2004 Associated Press analysis named a dozen young terror suspects as front-line leaders, their hands stained with the blood of attacks from Bali to Baghdad, Casablanca to Madrid.

Al-Zarqawi, who sat atop the 2004 list as the biggest threat after bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, died Wednesday when U.S. forces dropped two 500-pound bombs on his hideout northeast of Baghdad.

Tom Ridge, the former Homeland Security chief, cautioned Friday that governments can only reduce the risk from terrorism, not eliminate it. "There will be a successor to bin Laden, as there will be a successor, unfortunately, to Zarqawi," he said in a speech in Paris. "There will be a successor to al-Qaida."

But Ranstorp said it was far from clear if al-Zarqawi's replacement will have the contacts, resources or capacity to match the dead leader's effectiveness at the helm of Iraqi insurgent forces. "I'm not convinced that there is somebody ready to step in and fill Zarqawi's shoes," he said. "There may be, but it will take some time."

Globally, security forces have also had considerable success. Another four of the top 12 young militants in the 2004 list have met violent ends — in shootouts in Saudi Arabia, under U.S. bombardment in Iraq, or in an Algerian terror sweep. The seven who remain at large are on the run, and none has been able to match al-Zarqawi's success at launching large-scale attacks since mid-2004.

Counterterrorism officials warn that others have emerged as equally or more dangerous, and that the global fight against Islamic militancy is far from won. But tracking the fate of the "class of 2004" gives a rare insight into the landscape of Islamic militancy, and the short life expectancy of those who take up arms.

Joining al-Zarqawi in the list of dead militant leaders is Nabil Sahraoui, who took over the North African Salafist Group for Call and Combat in 2004 and announced that he was merging it with al-Qaida. Sahraoui did not have much time to savor his power play. The militant, who was in his 30s, was gunned down by Algerian troops that same year east of Algiers.

Habib Akdas, the accused ringleader of the 2003 bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, and another member of the class of 2004, died during the U.S. bombardment of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in November of that year, according to the testimony of an al-Qaida suspect in U.S. custody. Turkish security forces believe the account and say Akdas, who was also in his 30s, is dead.

Syrian-born Loa'i Mohammad Haj Bakr al-Saqa, who has emerged as an even more senior leader of the Istanbul bombings, but who was not included in the 2004 list of top terror suspects, is in a Turkish jail awaiting trial on terror charges.

Two other men who were on the 2004 list met their ends at the hands of security forces in Saudi Arabia.

Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, 30, who rose from high school dropout to become al-Qaida's leader in the kingdom, was cornered and killed by security forces in Riyadh in 2004, shortly after he masterminded the kidnapping and beheading of American engineer Paul M. Johnson.

In 2005, Saudi forces shot and killed Abdelkrim Mejjati, a Moroccan in his late 30s who was believed to have played a leading role in the May 2003 bombings in Casablanca that killed more than 30 people. Mejjati came from a privileged background, attending an exclusive French school in Morocco before turning to terrorism. He was sent to Saudi Arabia on bin Laden's orders, becoming one of the kingdom's most wanted men.

For most of those at large, life is anything but easy.

Amer el-Azizi, a Moroccan-born al-Qaida recruiter in Spain, has disappeared, though Spanish intelligence officials who had his wife under surveillance say that in 2003 the woman fled to Morocco, and later turned up in London and then Afghanistan.

Little is known about the fate of Saad Houssaini, a suspected co-plotter in the Casablanca attacks. Newspaper reports said he was arrested along the Syria-Iraq border and turned over to Morocco, but Moroccan officials have denied that.

Dulmatin, a key suspect in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, and Khadaffy Janjalani, chief of the extremist group Abu Sayyaf, have taken refuge on the Philippine island of Jolo, along with a force of 70-80 men, according to Philippine military officials. They are believed to be running low on weapons and ammunition.

Zulkarnaen, an Indonesia native who is operations chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror group, is believed to be hiding on the island of Java, though his location has not been verified since late 2002.

Two terror suspects, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, are believed to be holed up in Mogadishu, the Somali capital. The men are being sheltered by extremists who are part of the Islamic Courts Union, which took over the city this week.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said earlier this year that Washington supplied information about the men and their locations to Somali community leaders and urged them to turn them over to U.S. authorities. A group of secular warlords, believed financed by the United States, attacked the Islamic forces, but was driven from Mogadishu on Monday.

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Associated Press writers John Leicester in Paris, Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey, Robin McDowell in Jakarta, Indonesia, Paul Alexander in Manila, Philippines, Mar Roman in Madrid, Scheherezade Faramarzi in Rabat, Morocco, Vijay Joshi in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Chris Tomlinson in Nairobi, Kenya contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060609/...ext_generation

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