Al-Qaida in Iraq vowed Sunday to carry out large-scale attacks to "shake the enemy" after the killing of its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, heightening fears his death will bring no respite from carnage.
The group, in an Internet statement, said its leading body met after Zarqawi's death to discuss strategy and renew a pledge to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"We plan large-scaled operations that will shake the enemy and rob them of sleep, in co-ordination with the other factions of the Mujahideen Council," said the statement.
Iraqi leaders and their closest ally US President George W. Bush hailed Zarqawi's death in a US air strike on Wednesday as a major victory in the battle against "terrorism."
But no one expects violence to ease dramatically in Iraq, where Sunni Arab insurgents and al-Qaida militants are waging a campaign of bombings and shootings to topple the Shi'ite-led government backed by Washington.
In just some of the violence Sunday, police found the beheaded body of an Iraqi soldier in a river near Tikrit 175 kilometers north of Baghdad, police said.
A roadside bomb seriously wounded a senior police officer, Major General Ali Hussain, in northern Baghdad, police said. A policeman driving Hussain's car was killed and another wounded in the attack.
New Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hopes his national unity government of Shi'ites, Kurds and Arab Sunnis will ease militant attacks and tackle sectarian violence that has pushed the country alarming close to civil war.
In a move intended to help promote national reconciliation, he announced last week that more than 2,000 detainees would be released from US military and Iraqi prisons.
A second group of prisoners was freed Sunday after nearly 600 were released last week.
Some were released at a Baghdad bus station. A woman yelled and then fainted under a blistering sun when she learned her son was not among those let out of US and Iraqi detention centers.
"My son has been held nine months," she screamed.
Most detainees are from the Sunni community, once dominant under Saddam Hussein and now the backbone of the insurgency.
Maliki's Shi'ite-led government hopes to draw Sunnis into peaceful politics.
But the tough-talking Maliki faces the sensitive task of disbanding powerful militias tied to leading political parties, including ones in his own ruling Shi'ite Alliance.
He has vowed to merge militias with security forces, warning of civil war if weapons remain in the hands of militias. But Iraq's intelligence chief warned against such a move, saying it would give militias official cover to pursue their own agendas.
"I have reservations about merging militias into security forces because this is not the solution. The solution is to rehabilitate militia members for civil service jobs," Major General Mohammed al-Shahwani said in an interview with Azzaman newspaper published Sunday.
The most powerful groups are military wings of ruling political parties such as the Shi'ite SCIRI's Badr Brigades and radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
(China Daily June 12, 2006)
