Witnesses in Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province, said gunmen dressed in white marched through the city as mosque loudspeakers broadcast the statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, a Sunni militant group led by Al Qaida in Iraq.
"We are from Mujahideen Shura Council and our Amir [Prince] is Abu Omar Al Baghdadi. God willing we will set the law of Sharia here and we will fight the Americans," said a man who identified himself as Abu Harith, a Mujahideen field leader.
"We have announced the Islamic state. Ramadi is part of it.
Our state will comprise all the Sunni provinces of Iraq," he told Reuters by telephone. Abu Harith said the state would be headed by Amir Abu Omar Al Baghdadi, a little-known militant.
It would include Sunni areas of Baghdad, and the provinces of Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Salaheddin, Nineveh and parts of Babil and Wasit.
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A suspected leader of the group Islamic State in Iraq, which has ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, was detained in northern Iraq on Sunday, Iraqi security forces reported.
Muharib Mohammed Abdullah, aka Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was arrested in a joint raid by Iraqi and US soldiers in the city of Duluiya.
"This is a great success for the Iraqi security forces, comparable to the killing of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi," the Salaheddin provincial administration in the town of Tikrit said in a statement.
Abdullah is a former legal expert from the city of Balad, north of Baghdad.
The Islamic State in Iraq organization claimed responsibility Saturday for the murder of 18 policemen.
Al-Zarqawi, the former leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Iraq, was killed in the summer of 2006 by a US airstrike.
Alan Note: Interesting how this happened so shortly after the Deputy of former Minister of War of the Islamic Regime of Iran flew from Syria to Turkey and disappeared. And has still not been found.
A retired Iranian general linked to the killing of five American soldiers in Baghdad vanished mysteriously in Istanbul last month, Israeli media reported yesterday.
Arab newspapers are hinting the CIA and/or the Israeli spy agency Mossad are behind the disappearance of Gen. Ali Reza Askari, the reports said.
Askari, a former deputy defense minister, arrived in Istanbul on a flight from Damascus on Feb. 7, left his luggage in his hotel room - and vanished.
The missing general was in charge of Iranian undercover operations in central Iraq, said the Debkafile, a Web site that often reflects the thinking of those in the Israeli security forces.
Askari is believed to have taken part - or have links to - the armed group that stormed a U.S.-Iraqi command center in the holy city of Karbala on Jan. 20 and killed five U.S. troops, the Web site said.
The attackers wore military uniforms and used vehicles often driven by foreign dignitaries in an attempt to impersonate Americans.
A Middle East intelligence source said the United States could not let the outrage stand and had been hunting the general ever since, the Web site said.
On Feb. 6, two non-Turkish citizens made a reservation for Askari for three nights at the Istanbul Ceylan Hotel, paying cash, the site said.
But after the general arrived, he booked himself into the cheaper Hotel Ghilan.
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