Chilling video shows Iraqi insurgents making weapons of death

Published on Tuesday 4 October 2011 22:13

IRAQI insurgents allied to al-Qaeda have released a video showing showing them manufacturing rockets, silencers, improvised explosive devices, vehicle-borne IEDs, remote-control full-size cars and automated machine-guns.

Ansar al-Islam released the film to hightlight the sophistication of their operations in Iraq, a country in which sectarian violence continues even as the United States military prepares to leave by the end of the year.

Ansar al-Islam operates primarily in northern Iraq and consistently claims the second-largest number of Sunni jihadist attacks against the Shiite majority in the country after al-Qaeda in Iraq itself.

The number of civilians killed by violence in Iraq dropped to 110 in September from 155 in August, the second lowest for 2011.

Violence has dropped sharply since the height of Iraq’s sectarian conflict in 2006-7, but killings and attacks still happen almost daily, with car bombs the favoured method of destruction.

Last Friday, at least 18 people were killed when a large car bomb exploded among mourners at a Shiite funeral in Hilla south of Baghdad; on 12 September, gunmen killed 22 Shiite pilgrims in an ambush in Anbar province; and two days later a car bomb targeting a popular restaurant killed 15 in the southern Shiite city of Hamza.