Mosul suicide bomber was a medical student

By Kunal Khanna, London

The suicide bomber who blew up a mess hall in Mosul was a medical student. Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi, aged 20, was identified by the Saudi owned newspaper AsharqAl-Awsat. He launched the deadly attack in a US mess hall in Mosul, northern Iraq, on 21 December 2004.

As well as blowing himself up, he killed 22 US soldiers, who were eating their lunch, at noon in what was described as one of the bloodiest incidents for the US military since the war began in March 2003. The Saudi medical student attempted to maximise the amount of shrapnel that tore through the crowd by packing ball bearings around a bomb strapped to his body as a vest or backpack.

US officials have said that the bomber slipped past security by dressing in an Iraqi military uniform but that he was not an Iraqi soldier. He was, in fact, a student. Mr al-Ghamdi started studying medicine in Sudan, when his father worked and lived there. He stayed to complete his studies when his family returned to Saudi Arabia, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.

On 16 December, Mr al-Ghamdi's father learnt that his son had withdrawn all the money from a Sudanese bank account, which had been left for the student. Shortly afterwards the father received a telephone call from his son to tell himthat he was in Iraq to fight the Americans. The al-Ghamdis are a large Saudi clan. Three al-Ghamdis were among the hijackers on 11 September 2001.

Mosul is Iraq's third largest city. Violence has been incessant there since November, when Sunni insurgents attacked the US trained police force while US forces were largely concentrated in Falluja. Ethnic tension has also been heightened, in a city that is home to both Arabs and Kurds.

Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad, was home to some loyalists to Saddam Hussein's old regime. Saddam's two elder sons were hiding there when they were surrounded and killed by US troops in July 2004.



studentBMJ 2005;13:45-88 February ISSN 0966-6494