Saudi suspected in Mosul attack

CAIRO, Egypt – The suicide bomber who killed 22 people when he blew himself up in a U.S. mess hall in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was a Saudi medical student, an Arab newspaper reported Monday.

Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat identified him as 20-year-old Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi, citing unnamed friends of the man’s father. The friends said members of an Iraqi resistance group contacted al-Ghamdi’s father to tell him his son was the suicide bomber who carried out the Dec. 21 attack, the deadliest on an American installation in Iraq.

The father refused to discuss the suicide bombing, but told the newspaper his son had gone to Iraq to fight the Americans and had died there. The family held a mourning ceremony, the paper said. It did not say when the ceremony was held or where in Saudi Arabia the family lived.

The Associated Press was unable to reach Saudi security officials for comment despite repeated telephone calls Monday.

U.S. officials have said their preliminary investigation indicates the bomber was dressed in an Iraqi military uniform – but was not an Iraqi soldier – when he slipped into a mess tent packed with soldiers eating lunch in northern Iraq.

The paper did not name the Iraqi resistance group. But Ansar al-Sunnah, a radical Islamic Iraqi group that has been active in northern Iraq, claimed responsibility for the mess hall attack. In a videotape posted on the Web, Ansar al-Sunnah identified the suicide bomber as Abu Omar al-Musali – an apparent nom de guerre meaning Abu Omar of Mosul.

The man identified as Abu Omar al-Musali appeared in the Web video wearing an explosives-laden vest, but did not speak. Another man, speaking in an Iraqi accent, described how the operation had been planned. A subsequent segment showed what appeared to have been the attack.

The al-Ghamdis are a large Saudi clan, three members of which were among the Sept. 11 hijackers.