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Arab 'martyrs' leave for Iraq mission

BAGHDAD: Arabs volunteering for suicide missions in Iraq have left homes and families across the Middle East to fight what they fear is a US-led crusade against all Muslims, Iraqi state television said on Monday.

It showed a group of men, many wearing headbands emblazoned with "Allah Akbar" (God is Great) and waving guns as part of what Baghdad says is a force of 5,000 foreign volunteers for suicide missions.

"We are not just defending Iraq, but all Islamic countries," said one man, who gave his name as Abdel Karim Abu Azzam from the Syrian city of Aleppo.

"It started in Iraq. Syria, Lebanon and other nations could be next. Are we waiting for them to come to Medina to enter the tomb of our beloved Prophet?" he asked, referring to the tomb of Mohammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

An Iraqi army officer killed four US soldiers in a suicide bombing at a military checkpoint in central Iraq on Saturday, the first such incident of the war. Iraq has said that both Iraqis and foreign volunteers would step up suicide attacks.

"I came here to be martryed and I do not want to go back," said Hisham Mohammed Rida from Egypt.

"Today I have come to be a combatant, leaving behind four daughters, a son and their mother in the care of God."

"I call on all Arab Islamic nations to stand up as one man and defend the Arab Islamic nation," said a man called Abdullah from Algeria.

Another man said that "the Americans, Zionists and British want to steal the oil and riches of the Arab world." He said US President George W. Bush was lying when he accused Baghdad of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

"Listen, George Bush, listen America," said another man. "We did not start this aggression, you are the ones who have crossed the oceans and flown over the world to slaughter our children and women."

Worried about their relations with Washington, some Arab states appear to want to try to prevent their citizens from travelling to Iraq.

President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party is secular and has traditionally been hostile to Islamic fundamentalists, but Saddam has appealed to fellow Muslims in the fight against the United States and has long championed the Palestinian cause.-Reuters