Girl human bomb aborts attack in Iraq

CBS:

Rania al Ambaki was handcuffed to a gate at an Iraq security checkpoint. She was a human bomb, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports.

Suspicious officers immobilized her, jammed cell phone signals that could detonate the explosives, then carefully removed her suicide vest.

She turned out to be just 15 years old, and her story is an increasingly common one.

She comes from Baquba, an al Qaeda hot spot just north of Baghdad. It's a recruiting ground for women suicide bombers who are responsible for much of the recent carnage in story=3220766>Iraq.

Last year, there were eight women bombers. So far this year, there have been 35. A CBS News crew traveled to Baquba to meet Rania in jail.

"I now thank God that I didn't get blown up," she said through a translator.

Rania told police she had no idea the vest was a bomb. Family members, including her husband, she said, had helped her put it on.

Police think they may have drugged her, and meant to blow her up by remote control.

Rania said through a translator: "They told me that it was a kind of medical vest for back pain."

Gen. Abdul Kareem Qalaf helped interrogate Rania. He said: "She has a low IQ and is a vulnerable teenage girl."

Why does there suddenly seem to be so many women suicide bombers?

Qalaf said through a translator: "Al Qaeda uses these people - the mentally ill, children and very young women. This shows al Qaeda is failing."

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The husband has been arrested. I don't know if he has been served with divorce papers, bust I suspect he has been served with some form of indictment. Turning unfortunate people like this into human bombs points out the sickness of the al Qaeda culture of death and religious bigotry.

There was a time when we first started responding to the 9-11 attacks when Osama bin Laden bragged of having an unlimited supply of human bombs to attack us with. It appears his stock of human ordnance is running out and it is ironic that one of those places his logistics train is running short is Iraq which he claimed he would make the central front in his war against us.

Many in the US still do not comprehend the importance of the strategic defeat we have imposed on al Qaeda in Iraq. Many never understood its strategic importance and some of Obama supporters actually wanted us to lose in Iraq. That should be their shame.