Spanish police arrested 16 suspected Islamist militants yesterday, including followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and men preparing to become suicide bombers in Iraq, the Spanish Interior Ministry said.

It was the second European swoop in two days against suspected backers of the Iraqi insurgency, following Germany's arrest of three Iraqis on Tuesday.

Eleven of the suspects in Spain were followers of Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said.

"Many of them expressed their will to become martyrs for Islam, demonstrating they are extremely radical and dangerous," the ministry said in a statement.

It said they belonged to "an established Islamist network in our country, tied to the terrorist organisation Ansar al-Islam/Zarqawi network."

The other five were suspected of aiding the cell that carried out the Madrid train bombings of March 11, 2004, which killed 191 people and wounded 1,900 three days before a general election.

One Madrid train-bombing suspect who escaped police is believed already to have carried out a suicide attack in Iraq sometime between May 12-19, the ministry said.

He was named as Mohamed Afalah, who police say fled the scene when seven prime suspects for the train bombing blew themselves up on April 3, 2004 after being surrounded by police in a suburban Madrid apartment.

The blast also killed a special police agent.

Police and intelligence sources say Iraqi militants have recruited fighters in several European countries to join the insurgency against the Iraqi Government and the US-led coalition supporting it.

Investigations in Spain, Italy, Germany and Sweden suggest Ansar al-Islam - a group with which the United States linked Zarqawi before the Iraq War - has emerged as the most prominent militant group engaged in fundraising and recruitment.

A French intelligence chief said last month that five young men from a single Paris district had already died in Iraq, one in a suicide attack.

German police arrested three suspected members of Ansar al-Islam on Tuesday, saying they had raised significant amounts of money for the group and provided logistical support such as courier services.
 
The US State Department describes Ansar al-Islam on its website as a radical Islamist group of Iraqi Kurds and Arabs, closely linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and to Zarqawi, his deputy in Iraq.

Of the 16 suspects, 11 are Moroccan, two are Algerian, two are Spaniards born in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north coast of Morocco, and one is of unknown origin.

Most of them engaged in drug dealing and other petty crime to finance jihad - a tactic also used by the Madrid train bombers - the ministry said.

(China Daily June 16, 2005)