Iraq

FBI to investigate al-Qaida link to Baghdad bombing

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The FBI sent a team to Iraq to lead the investigation into the car bombing of the Jordanian Embassy as a group linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network became a focus of the inquiry, U.S. officials said Friday. The death toll rose to 19 with at least 50 wounded.

L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, said the FBI would head the investigation, which involves the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi police.

"We will do all we can to help the Iraqi authorities find these people and bring them to justice," Bremer said.

The Bush administration is concerned Iraqi police do not possess the abilities, such as bomb blast analysis, to properly investigate the deadly attack, a senior Justice Department official told the Associated Press.

The FBI team, of fewer than a dozen, will mainly secure and analyze evidence at the bombing site and likely help train Iraqi investigators in the same skills, the official said. It was not known when the team would arrive or how long it would stay.

Authorities are looking at Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida-linked group, as a potential suspect, Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told U.S.-run Radio Sawa.

"The one organization that we have confidence and that we know is in Iraq and in the Baghdad area is Ansar al-Islam," he said. "It is unknown whether this particular organization was associated with the (bombing). Perhaps that'll become clear as we go down the road.

"But that is an al-Qaida-related organization and one that we are focusing attention on," Schwartz said.

The bombing was the first large-scale terrorist attack since Baghdad fell to U.S. forces April 9 and it made Thursday the bloodiest since President Bush declared an end to major combat.

Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ansar al-Islam was known for bombings and assassinations of Kurdish figures. But the group, which has included veterans of bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan, has not previously been linked to attacks on the scale of the embassy blast.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said the group was a link between Baghdad and al-Qaida when he made his case for war to the U.N. Security Council in February. Others have questioned whether there was any connection to Hussein's regime.

U.S. forces knocked out Ansar-al-Islam's main headquarters in northeastern Iraq early in the war. But Bremer has said the group has been rebuilding in the country, with surviving members filtering back from Iran.

American authorities have said they do not believe terrorist groups have played a major role in the guerrilla war against American occupation forces. They believe the attacks are the work of remnants of Hussein's regime - his Republican Guard, fedayeen militia and intelligence services.

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