IAI says the ISI is ignoring the gist of the Bin Laden statement

Ali Nuaimi, spokesman for the Islamic Army of Iraq, issued a statement expressing disappointment about the fact that the hoped-for reconciliatory thrust of the latest Bin Laden statement hasn't been realized, citing battles between AlQaeda affiliates and the IAI in Latifiya recently, and in the Samarra area last week.

The Latifiya events, he says, started with a bloody raid on the region by the occupation army and a dirty squad with them, with air support, in which a number of locals were arrested.

And those who call themselves mujahideen, instead of helping to bandage the wounds of the local people and ease the effects of the raids by the occupiers, instead, armed AlQaeda people the following day launched a broad attack on the same region, resulting in the martyrdom of four people from the defenceless population and the IAI, and they wrecked 14 houses with their contents belonging to defenceless people of the area.

And the IAI responded in defence of them and of their homes, and the confrontations are still continuing... in a terrifying spectacle that will gladden the hearts of the occupiers and sadden the hearts of Muslims in Iraq and outside of Iraq.

The statement says a similar set of confrontations occurred in Samarra south of Baghdad last week.

The statement says the worst part of this is that there was hope and expectation that the recent statement of Bin Laden would serve to put an end to this kind of confrontation.

What grieves us is that we had been expecting something different after the speech of Sheikh Osama Bin Laden in which he made clear that there were mistakes by the AlQaeda organization and a need to overcome them. And the sheikh urged them to make this the "year of the group" [we had been expecting] that the [AQ] organization in Iraq would respond to the message in an effective way...

Al-Quds al-Arabi takes note of the this IAI statement on its front page, as a sidebar to the latest report of civilian casualties from American bombing in Iraq. The paper says these types of confrontation between AQ and the IAI are continuing sporadically in areas north and south of Baghdad, adding that the Islamic State of Iraq, the AQ affiliate, accuses the IAI of backing tribal groups that fight the ISI.

The Al-Quds story is headed: "The Islamic Army accuses AlQaeda of not listening to Bin Laden".