PARIS — An Islamic extremist from Belgium has achieved a grim milestone by becoming the first female European convert to commit a suicide bombing in Iraq, police said Wednesday after arresting 15 suspects linked to the woman in Belgium and France.
The 36-year-old woman died Nov. 9 in the car bombing of a U.S. military convoy after traveling with her Moroccan-born husband to Iraq to join other foreign fighters in a network led by militant kingpin Abu Musab Zarqawi, investigators said. No troops were killed in the attack.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday December 09, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 26 words Type of Material: Correction
Suicide bomber -- A Dec. 1 article in Section A about a female suicide bomber misspelled the name of Schaerbeek, a neighborhood in Brussels, as Skaarbeck.
Investigators said the incident illustrated the growing role of converts and women in Europe's increasingly fierce and violent Islamic networks. It also apparently is the first suicide bombing anywhere by a female Islamic convert of European descent, European and U.S. investigators said. Women in European networks have generally been relegated to ideological activity and logistics.
"This is a scary group," a veteran Belgian investigator said. "You have people who committed bombings, who helped recruit and send bombers, at least one who fought in Iraq and returned. And you have this couple who went to Iraq to die. Before they left they planned everything, prepared everything here knowing they would not return."
The suicide bombing north of Baghdad accelerated cooperation between U.S. authorities and Belgian police, whose intercepts of phone conversations between suspects in Belgium and Iraq helped U.S. troops track down a cell of foreign fighters preparing additional attacks, investigators told The Times. In an assault on a hide-out in the Fallouja area a few days after the bombing, U.S. troops killed the husband, who was found wearing an explosives-rigged vest, and four other militants, Belgian authorities said.
"He was killed by American soldiers," said Glen Audenart, director of Belgium's federal police, during a news conference at which he announced the arrests of 14 suspects in Brussels, Antwerp, Charleroi and Tongeren. In addition, French police arrested a 27-year-old Tunisian, a suspected associate of the bomber's husband, in an industrial suburb north of Paris on Wednesday.
The raids culminated a four-month Belgian investigation of the network. American authorities joined the effort as investigators detected plots underway against U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
"It was primarily a Belgian investigation," a U.S. official said. "The main reason we got involved was because of the targeting of U.S. forces."
