Female Death Squads

This is interesting- and somewhat disturbing- news sent out by a Jordanian counter-terror expert.

Recent chatter on jihadi forums points to a new organized death squad in Iraq. The new group is allegedly composed of Shiite female assassination units that will target Sunnis. Sunni jihadi websites have warned their followers about this new threat, saying that these female units, called al-Zahra groups after Fatima al-Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet and the wife of the Muslim caliph Ali, are trained to kill Sunnis with bayonets and handguns equipped with silencers.

The women are apparently on their way to Baghdad and the fear is that they will target women and children.

The purpose of the posting was to insinuate that Iranians had trained the al-Zahra units. In the same context, another Sunni user, Khaled al-Rawi, said that the Shiites' current attack potential is a repeat of the Shiite attacks that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s against Sunnis. At the time, Shiite party al-Dawa al-Safawia organized and trained prostitutes to blow up cars and to assassinate Sunni figures and civilians in Iraq (http://www.iraqirabita.org, November 2). The website also contained pictures of Shiite females covered completely in black similar to the Iranian female police training video.

I'd say that it will be worth paying attention to developments in Iraq in the coming weeks to see if there are any reports of these women-only death squads.